# How can I translate rich text to plain text?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-translate-rich-text-to-plain-text/426608>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 15, 2007, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-translate-rich-text-to-plain-text/426608 "2007-11-15T22:41:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2007, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-translate-rich-text-to-plain-text/426608/1 "2007-11-15T22:41:58Z")

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I like to use my iPod notes to hold recipes. This makes it easy to shop for things I need when I want to make something special. I try to use Text Edit, to pair it down as best I can, but even this leaves a crazy amount of useless garbage in the text that the iPod interperets. What mac program can I use to cut it down to just plain text?

Also, is there any plan to make notes a little more capable than just reading plain text?

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**Author:** ![ChrisBooth12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@ChrisBooth12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisBooth12)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2007, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-translate-rich-text-to-plain-text/426608/2 "2007-11-15T22:44:34Z")

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Do you have the mac verision of notepad? Just copy and paste it there then copy and paste again

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**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2007, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-translate-rich-text-to-plain-text/426608/3 "2007-11-15T23:14:41Z")

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Mac Notepad is a proprietary software sold by kagi software. I will not pay for something that is so rudimentery.

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**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2007, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-translate-rich-text-to-plain-text/426608/4 "2007-11-15T23:47:35Z")

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You should be able to use any program that can save a file as “plain text” format. I use a small shareware program called TexEdit (trans-tex software) but it’s $15 shareware.

Search for Macintosh free text editor if you don’t want to use up your word processor for this task (of creating a simple text file). The first hit I found was this freeware program  
[http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/](http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/)

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2007, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-translate-rich-text-to-plain-text/426608/5 "2007-11-16T00:22:06Z")

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You can use TextEdit. Just hit command-shift-T and it’ll switch from RTF to plain text and back.

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**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2007, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-translate-rich-text-to-plain-text/426608/6 "2007-11-16T00:38:31Z")

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Actually, **Chronos**. that is not quite what I wanted but it solves the problem. I was really hoping I could get Text Edit to display what was showing up on the iPod so I could cut out the garbage myself, but I can work with this solution.