In short, I have a large HTML document that I want to grab all the text from. Should be as easy as copying and pasting it, right? Well, not quite. There’s a bunch of tables and images interspersed throughout that I don’t want included.
So is there a way to grab all the text, sans images and other non-text things?
What are you pasting into?
Into word or similar?
Select all
Copy.
Then into Word…
Edit
Paste Special
Unformatted Text
Or paste the web page into notepad, save the file then copy and paste the text into whatever. Same deal really.
Another way. View the html doc in a browser. Choose “Save As…”. For file type, choose “Text File”.
The file will include a bunch of tabs to crudely represent some formatting, but you can remove all that with a single find/replace. For example, this is the current page saved as text & pasted back into a CODE tag in this post:
Straight Dope Message Board - Is there a way to just copy the text from a webpage?
Straight Dope Message Board > General Questions
Is there a way to just copy the text from a webpage?
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Today, 04:12 AM #1
Red Barchetta
Member Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 656
Location: Bay Area, California
Is there a way to just copy the text from a webpage?
In short, I have a large HTML document that I want to grab all the text from.
Should be as easy as copying and pasting it, right? Well, not quite. There's a
bunch of tables and images interspersed throughout that I don't want included.
So is there a way to grab all the text, sans images and other non-text things?
Red Barchetta
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Today, 04:31 AM #2
essell
Member Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 301
Location: UK
Quote:
Originally Posted by Red Barchetta
In short, I have a large HTML document that I want to grab all the text
from. Should be as easy as copying and pasting it, right? Well, not quite.
There's a bunch of tables and images interspersed throughout that I don't
want included.
So is there a way to grab all the text, sans images and other non-text
things?
What are you pasting into?
Into word or similar?
Select all
Copy.
Then into Word..
Edit
Paste Special
Unformatted Text
Or paste the web page into notepad, save the file then copy and paste the text
into whatever. Same deal really.
essell
View Public Profile
Send a private message to essell
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There’s a very handy free utility you can download called ‘Pure Text’
http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/
Here’s the description from the site.
“Have you ever copied some text from a web page or a document and then wanted to paste it as simple text into another application without getting all the formatting from the original source? PureText makes this simple by adding a new Windows hot-key (default is WINDOWS+V) that allows you to paste text to any application without formatting.”
Very handy tool IMO.