Notes formatting

[bipbop]

I copied a word from a web page, and pasted it into a note, and the formatting was retained, so I had to select the word and 'clear formatting'. Is it possible to set it to always use plain text ? I've seen everywhere, including advanced prefs, but the only thing that can be set to plain text is mail composing.

[BritTim]

Assuming you use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-v to paste normally, you should also learn Shift-Ctrl-v which is paste plain.

[bipbop]

That worked.

Another thing I just noticed is that some of the notes are plain text, but have a "make rich text" in edit mode. But the reverse is not true. But this is easily fixed by copying the text, create a new note, and Shift-Ctrl-v.

Thanks!

[n5bb]

Currently all new Notes are in Rich Text mode by default. Originally (a decade ago) all notes were Plain Text, since there was no ability to make them Rich Text. I believe that Rich Text mode was probably added to Notes in late 2011.

If you Edit any note on a PC, you will see a see a button at the top which allows you to switch between Plain Text and Rich Text modes.

• The Plain Text / Rich Text button changes the text mode of an existing note (or a new one you are creating).
• If you Save the note after changing the text mode, the text mode of that note will be saved in the active mode immediately before you clicked Save.
• If you use the Plain Text / Rich Text button and realize you didn't mean to make the change, click Cancel at the upper right and that note will be left in exact state it was in before you clicked Edit.
• If you make a mistake, Ctrl+Z will undo you last changes. Ctrl+Y will redo your changes. Undo and redo are multi-level so don't repeat them unless you know what you are doing!

Bill

[bipbop]

Originally Posted by n5bb

Currently all new Notes are in Rich Text mode by default. Originally (a decade ago) all notes were Plain Text, since there was no ability to make them Rich Text. I believe that Rich Text mode was probably added to Notes in late 2011.

If you Edit any note on a PC, you will see a see a button at the top which allows you to switch between Plain Text and Rich Text modes.

• The Plain Text / Rich Text button changes the text mode of an existing note (or a new one you are creating).
• If you Save the note after changing the text mode, the text mode of that note will be saved in the active mode immediately before you clicked Save.
• If you use the Plain Text / Rich Text button and realize you didn't mean to make the change, click Cancel at the upper right and that note will be left in exact state it was in before you clicked Edit.
• If you make a mistake, Ctrl+Z will undo you last changes. Ctrl+Y will redo your changes. Undo and redo are multi-level so don't repeat them unless you know what you are doing!

Bill

That's very informative. Thank you!

[Grhm]

I use notes a lot, and it's only in the last few months that this formatting issue has started to cause me difficulties... much more recently than 2011.
The problem was discussed recently in a different thread, http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?p=618258
As suggested to me there, I raised a help-desk ticket about the inability to remove the formatting if you are using the mobile web interface. Here is gist of the somewhat unsatisfactory exchange:

Me:
If you copy something into a note from a web site using the mobile web interface you get the formatting too, whether you want it or not; and because there is no 'change to plain text' button, there is no way of removing it.
Please could you alter the behaviour so that when text is pasted into a note in the mobile interface it is pasted as plain text, not as rich text.

Fastmail:
I have shared this with our development team.
Please note that we're unable to offer any timeline as to if or when this feature could be implemented.
As a workaround, when pasting rich text into your mobile app, there is an option for "Paste as plain text"

Me:
Not for me, there isn't!
If you re-read the original ticket, you’ll see that the problem I'm reporting is with the mobile web interface, not the app.
I don’t use the app, so unfortunately providing me with a “workaround” that uses the app was not helpful !

Fastmail:
Sorry about the confusion.
The option "Paste as plain text" is an Android feature and it seems to be available for phones using Android 8 and above. I believe that your phone is on an older Android version, which is why you're not seeing this.
That said, we do have plans to introduce this feature both on our Notes and compose screens, but I'm afraid we don't have an ETA on it.

Me:
Pending the introduction of any new feature, a very simple solution to the problem would be for you to reverse the change you made recently so that the default behaviour when pasting is plain text not rich text.
(At the moment, because I mainly use mobile webmail, notes are much less useful than they used to be, and I often have to resort to using fictitious draft e-mails to manipulate text.)
Please do consider this.

Fastmail:
Thanks for the detailed feedback on this.
I have shared your concerns with our development team.
Please note there is currently no timeline for when this feature may be available.

[Grhm]

I've discovered a simple, free, open-source Android app that solves this problem.
It's at https://github.com/johanhil/copy-to-clipboard ...and it's also available on f-droid.
Once it's installed, when you select any (formatted) text, if you choose "share" instead of "copy", and then pick this app from the menu, the selected text is transferred to the clipboard as plain text.
You can then paste it into Notes sans-formatting.