"By default, Windows copies text, along with formatting, every time you select and copy from, say, a website. I frequently find myself pasting to notepad and recopying to get rid of the formatting. Is there a Windows shortcut to allow me to just paste pure text without any formatting? PLEASE HELP!"

The answer to your problem is a little piece of freeware called Pure Text.

PureText makes what you want to do simple by adding a new Windows hot-key (the default is WINDOWS+V) that allows you to paste text to any application without the formatting.

PureText is available from http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/.

After running PureText.exe, you will see a "PT" systems tray icon appear near the clock on your task bar. You can...

• click on this icon to remove formatting from the text that is currently on the clipboard.
• right-click on the icon to display a menu with more options.

However the easiest way to use PureText is to simply use its hot-key, WINDOWS+V, to paste text; instead of using the standard CTRL+V hot-key that is built into most Windows applications.

To configure PureText...

• right-click on its tray icon and choose "Options" from the pop-up menu.
• The default hot-key is WINDOWS+V, but this can be changed.
• In this Options window, you can also configure PureText to run each time you log into Windows.