Clear formatting

When text has accumulated bold, italic, colour, font changes, or other styles you no longer want, you can strip them all in one step rather than toggling each one off individually.

What gets removed

Clearing formatting removes two kinds of style at once:

• Inline marks: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, inline code, superscript, subscript, small, text colour, and highlight.
• Block styles: headings, blockquotes, code blocks, and lists. These are converted to normal paragraphs.

Links are also removed as part of the inline marks. If you want to keep a link, remove it separately first using the Remove link button.

Clear formatting on the desktop toolbar

1. Select the text you want to clean up. You can select across multiple paragraphs.
2. Click the Clear formatting button at the right end of the formatting toolbar.

The selection becomes plain text in the default font and size, with no heading style.

Clear formatting on a narrow screen

On a narrow screen, the formatting controls collapse into dropdown menus.

1. Select the text you want to clean up.
2. Click the Format menu in the toolbar.
3. Click Clear formatting at the bottom of the menu.

What is not removed

Clearing formatting acts only on selected text. Text outside the selection is not changed. Tables and images within the selection stay in place; the command removes styles from the text around them, not the elements themselves.

If you want to undo a clear-formatting action, press Cmd+Z (macOS) or Ctrl+Z (Windows).