If you’re importing and exporting content from websites via CSV it can be useful to scrub the HTML or formatting from descriptions and product details.
On OpenOffice.org Calc you can do this by going to Edit > Find & Replace

Search for <.*>
Replace with: nothing

Your content will be scrubbed of HTML formatting – at least everything that was between the relevant tags will be taken out.
This formula should also work in word processing and other documents, but be sure to save a copy before you try!