How To Remove Microsoft Word Formatting From a WordPress Post

It is not a good idea to copy directly from Word Processing software, such as Microsoft Word, into WordPress’s visual editor directly, as word processors add lots of styling information which gets copied across, and you may well find that your website’s styles and fonts are not respected in your document!

When you do copy directly from a software like Microsoft Word, you will find, if you view in “HTML View” that you see lots of formatting like this:

Formatting Added by Microsoft Word in WordPress

So, okay, now you know what not to do, but how can one go about removing all of this stuff, without having to painstakingly go through the whole document removing it all?!

Well, one option, if you saved your Word (or whatever software you used) doc, is to simply remove it all, then copy paste it in the correct way. But, since you already have it all there, then you may simply press the “Remove Formatting” button.

Remove Formatting from WordPress Post

There is a helpful “remove formatting” button in the second row on the Visual Editor (“Visual” tab on the write posts page). In case you can’t find it, below is a handy photo to help!

Remove Formatting Button in WordPress “Add Post” Screen

What you need to do, is highlight all of the text using your mouse, then click the “Remove Formatting” button. You should see that all of the styles and fonts added by Word disappear. If not, delete and use the “Paste From Word” function (which should be how you paste in future).

Any more problems with formatting WordPress? Leave a public comment below!