What Kinds of Text Formatting Can TextCleanr Clean Up?

Updated

TextCleanr is a browser-based text cleanup tool that fixes formatting problems caused by copying and pasting between applications. It can remove extra spaces, tabs, and line breaks; strip HTML brackets and MS Word-specific characters; remove email indents and URLs; and perform encoding, find-and-replace, and text comparison tasks. It is most useful when pasted text carries hidden formatting from email clients, word processors, or web pages and you need plain, consistent text. The site states it does not save or store any data you enter.

Formatting Cleanup Options

The tool groups cleanup actions into dropdown menus. Each menu offers a "Do Nothing" default, so you only apply the changes you need.

Spaces and Tabs

  • Remove Extra Spaces (and Tabs): collapses repeated spaces and tabs.
  • Remove All Spaces: deletes every space character.
  • Trim Leading / Trim Trailing: removes spaces at the start or end of the text.

Line Breaks

  • Remove All: deletes every new line.
  • New Line to Single Space: converts line breaks into single spaces, useful for turning wrapped paragraphs into one continuous block.

Email Indents

  • Remove: strips the indentation that email clients add to quoted replies.

HTML

  • Remove Brackets to Characters: strips HTML tags and leaves the text content.

MS Word Specific Chars

  • Replace Them: converts Word-specific characters (such as smart quotes and special dashes) into standard equivalents.
  • Leave Them: keeps them unchanged.

Unicode

  • Remove it: strips Unicode characters from the text.

URLs

  • Remove Them: deletes URLs from the text.
  • Shorten Them (tiny.tw): replaces URLs with shortened versions via the Tiny.tw API.
  • Hyperlink Them: converts URLs into hyperlinks.

Case, Encoding, and Other Operations

Beyond formatting cleanup, TextCleanr offers:

Operation Options
Text case All lowercase, all uppercase, capitalize all words, sentence case
Encoding md5, uuencode, uudecode, base64 encode, base64 decode
Find and replace Replace specified text with new text
Compare text See differences between two versions

When to Use It

TextCleanr fits tasks like pasting an email reply into a document and removing quote indents, cleaning copied web content by stripping HTML tags, or normalizing spacing before publishing text. For example, if you copy a paragraph from a Word document and it arrives with curly quotes and irregular spacing, set MS Word Specific Chars to "Replace Them" and Spaces to "Remove Extra Spaces (and Tabs)," then copy the cleaned result.

Because the tool processes text in the browser and states it does not store entered data, it is also suitable for tablets and mobile devices. Note that URL shortening depends on the external Tiny.tw API, so that specific option requires a working connection to that service.