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What is TextCleanr?
TextCleanr is a browser-based text cleanup tool at TextCleanr for fixing text that gets mangled when you copy and paste between applications. You paste text into a box, choose what to strip or change, and get a cleaned version back. The site states it doesn't save or store anything you enter.
Its main uses fall into a few groups:
- Formatting repair: removing email indents (the
>quote marks and nested spacing), collapsing extra spaces and tabs, trimming leading or trailing spaces, and removing or converting line breaks. - Case changes: lowercase, uppercase, capitalize each word, or sentence case.
- Markup and character cleanup: stripping HTML brackets, replacing MS Word-specific characters such as curly quotes and dashes, and removing Unicode characters.
- URL handling: leaving URLs alone, removing them, shortening them, or turning them into hyperlinks.
- Encoding: Base64 encode/decode, uuencode/uudecode, and MD5.
- Find and replace, plus a separate compare mode that shows differences between two versions of text.
Who it suits
It's aimed at people doing quick, one-off cleanup rather than scripted or bulk processing: someone pasting a quoted email thread into a document, moving text from Word into a web form, or tidying pasted content before publishing. The page notes it works on tablets and mobile devices, where fiddly manual editing is slow.
Trade-offs to weigh
Every option is a checkbox or dropdown you set per paste, which is fast for occasional jobs but repetitive if you clean the same kind of text daily—a small script or your editor's find-and-replace would be better there. Because the tool is described as a work in progress, treat the output as a draft: skim the result, especially after aggressive options like removing all spaces or all newlines, which can merge words or paragraphs you wanted kept apart.
A practical example
You copy a long email reply full of > indents into a proposal draft. Paste it in, set Email Indents to Remove, set Spaces to Remove Extra Spaces, and leave Line Breaks alone so paragraphs survive. Then use Compare Text against your original to confirm nothing important was lost.
As a next step, decide based on volume: for a one-off paste, work through the dropdowns top to bottom; for recurring cleanup, note which settings you always pick and consider a reusable find-and-replace routine instead.
How do I remove email indents and extra spaces from pasted text?
Use TextCleanr's Email Indents and Spaces options together: paste the text into the input box, set Email Indents to "Remove," set Spaces to "Remove Extra Spaces (and Tabs)," then run the clean. That combination targets the two most common artifacts of pasted email — the leading > characters or indentation from quoted replies, and the doubled spaces and stray tabs that come with copied formatting.
What each setting does
| Problem in pasted text | Setting to choose | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Quoted-reply markers and indentation | Email Indents → Remove | Strips the indent characters that email clients add to quoted lines |
| Double spaces, tab characters | Spaces → Remove Extra Spaces (and Tabs) | Collapses runs of spaces and removes tabs |
| Leading or trailing whitespace only | Spaces → Trim Leading / Trim Trailing | Trims the edges without touching interior spacing |
| All spaces removed entirely | Spaces → Remove All Spaces | Joins words together — only useful for codes or IDs |
The page notes that TextCleanr does not save or store entered text, which matters if you are pasting client emails or internal correspondence. It also runs in the browser, so it works on a tablet or phone where you may not have a desktop editor handy.
A practical workflow
- Paste the raw email text into the box.
- Remove email indents first — this exposes the real line structure.
- Then remove extra spaces and tabs.
- If line breaks are also broken up oddly, use the Line Breaks options ("Remove All" or "New Line to Single Space") to reflow paragraphs.
- Use Find and replace for leftovers such as signature blocks or repeated headers.
If the pasted text came from Word rather than email, the MS Word Specific Chars option ("Replace Them") handles curly quotes and non-breaking spaces that survive a normal copy-paste. For comparing a cleaned version against the original, the site's Compare Text feature shows the differences side by side.
When a different tool fits better
For heavy cleanup of long documents with tracked changes or embedded tables, a word processor's paste-as-plain-text command is more reliable than any web cleaner. For batch processing many files at once, a script or a dedicated bulk tool saves repeated pasting. TextCleanr suits one-off, quick fixes on short passages — a paragraph from an email, a snippet from a PDF, a block of text headed into a CMS field.
A sensible next step: keep the original text in a separate note before cleaning, so you can spot anything the tool removed that you actually needed — particularly indentation that carried meaning, such as nested list structure.
Can TextCleanr strip Microsoft Word formatting and special characters from copied text?
Yes. TextCleanr includes a dedicated MS Word Specific Chars option that can either leave those characters in place or replace them, and you can combine it with line-break, spacing, HTML, and Unicode cleanup in the same pass.
What that means in practice
- Word formatting: Pasting from Word often carries smart quotes, non-breaking spaces, and odd characters. The MS Word Specific Chars setting is the direct control for those.
- Layout cleanup: Separate settings remove email indents, extra spaces and tabs, all spaces, or leading/trailing spaces, and handle line breaks (remove all, convert to a new line, or collapse to a single space).
- HTML and brackets: You can strip HTML brackets or convert them to characters, useful when text arrives as raw markup.
- Unicode: Choose to keep or remove Unicode characters.
- Find and replace: A manual pass for anything the presets miss.
- Extras: Base64 and UUencode encode/decode, plus a text comparison view.
A realistic workflow
A writer pastes a paragraph from a Word draft into a CMS and finds curly quotes, double spaces, and stray line breaks. The sensible order is: replace MS Word characters, remove extra spaces, then normalize line breaks. Check the result before publishing, since broad presets can also strip characters you wanted to keep (for example, deliberate non-Latin text when Unicode removal is on).
The page states that entered text is not saved or stored, which matters if you handle drafts or client copy. For a repeatable check on two versions, the compare-text feature is more useful than eyeballing changes.
Decision criterion
Use TextCleanr when you want a quick browser-based pass with visible toggles and no install; for very large documents or automated batch cleanup, a script or your editor's paste-as-plain-text option will be more reliable. A related option from the same maker is Tiny.tw for shortening URLs and text.
How can I compare two versions of text to see the differences?
TextCleanr includes a Compare Text feature for spotting differences between two versions of text, alongside its broader cleanup tools. Paste each version into the tool and review the differences it highlights, which is useful when you have an edited draft and an original and need to see exactly what changed.
Practical ways to use it
- Editing and proofreading: Compare a revised document against the previous draft to catch accidental deletions or wording changes.
- Version control for prose: Check a client's returned copy against your submitted version before accepting edits.
- Data cleanup checks: After using TextCleanr's cleanup options (removing extra spaces, line breaks, or Word-specific characters), compare the result with the original to confirm nothing important was lost.
Decision criteria
A side-by-side comparison is most valuable when changes are small and scattered; for heavily rewritten text, a diff view can be noisy and a fresh read may be faster. If the two versions come from different applications, clean up formatting in each first so the comparison reflects real content changes rather than stray spaces or line breaks.
As a next step, keep a copy of the original text before running any cleanup or replacement operations, so you always have a baseline to compare against.
How do I Base64 encode or decode text with TextCleanr?
Open TextCleanr, paste your text into the "Paste Text to clean in the box below" field, then find the Encoding dropdown among the cleanup options. Select base64 Encode to convert your text to Base64, or base64 Decode to turn a Base64 string back into readable text. The converted result appears in the cleaned-text output, which you copy out.
A practical example: encoding the word Hello should give you SGVsbG8=. If you paste that string back in and choose Decode, you get Hello again. Decoding only works on valid Base64, so a string with stray characters or the wrong padding will produce garbled output rather than an error message.
Things to know before relying on it
- The same Encoding menu also offers md5, uuencode and uuudecode, so check you picked the Base64 option rather than a neighbouring one.
- The page states it doesn't save or store entered text, which makes it reasonable for quick, non-sensitive conversions. For confidential material such as credentials or personal data, a local tool or your editor's built-in encoder avoids sending anything over the web at all.
- Because encoding is one of many cleanup steps on the same screen, other selected options (removing extra spaces, stripping line breaks) can alter the text before it is encoded. If exact output matters, set the other dropdowns to "Do Nothing" first.
Decision criterion: use the browser tool for one-off or mobile conversions where convenience wins; use a command-line or offline encoder when you need repeatable, scriptable output or must keep data on your own machine.
Does TextCleanr store or save the text I paste into it?
No. TextCleanr states that it does not save or store any text you enter, so pasted content is processed for the cleanup you request rather than retained as a stored document.
That matters most when you are tidying text that contains client names, email threads, internal notes or draft copy. A browser-based cleaner is convenient for those jobs, but “not stored by the site” is not the same as “private in every respect”: your browser, device, network and any extensions you use sit outside the tool. For genuinely sensitive material, check your organisation’s rules before pasting it anywhere online, and consider doing the cleanup locally instead.
A practical next step: paste a short, non-sensitive sample first to confirm the output matches what you need—say, removing email indentation and extra spaces—then process the full text. If you need repeatable cleaning of confidential files, a desktop text editor or spreadsheet with find-and-replace is the safer default.
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