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How to "paste as plain text" to copy text into a Figma text field?

Bill_Stewart_S

I have 2 problems copying text between text fields in Figma that would be solved if there was a “paste as plain text” option.

  • Problem 1: How do you copy text into a text object as plain text? On a daily basis, I have situations where I have a lot of components on screens, and I want to copy text from component A to component B, where the text styles are radically different between A and B (like 36pt regular and 14pt bold).
  • If I could copy the text from A and then go to object B and select “paste as plain text”, that would solve it, but there is no such option. Does anyone know an efficient workaround that’s better than pasting the text into a plain text editor and then copying that out to then paste somewhere else in Figma?
  • Problem 2: How do you copy a URL as text into a field? Figma turns it into a hyperlink INSTEAD of copying it in as plain text. Note that “paste as plain text” would solve both.
    I will be most appreciative of any help on these chronic issues.

Best answer by Tibor

I’m pasting text (CMD+SHIFT+V) from external sources into Figma components hundreds of times per session. Pasting overrides my formatting and I have to reset the Text style and the Fill which is a HUGE productivity killer to me.

I don’t think anyone would ever want to keep the formatting when pasting into any text field from outside Figma.

I certainly want to avoid installing another plugin to paste. Please make CMD+V an unstyled paste by default.

Update: CMD+SHIFT+V works well inside Figma and when you paste from outside, it doesn’t carry the formatting. This resolves the case for me.

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14 replies

Robert5
  • Robert5
  • 1 reply
  • August 13, 2021

Shift + Cmd + V

Vlad_Ucrainshi
Laurentiu_Lazar
Dani_Balogh
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    Vlad_Ucrainshi
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    vdekkernl
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    Donato_Espinosa
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    Anastasiia32
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    Nyu_Dias
Figma_Bot
  • Figma_Bot
  • 20 replies
  • August 13, 2021

Problem 1: Ctrl+Shift+V (Cmd+Shift+V) will help you paste as plain text, but it only works in a Figma file, if you copy from external source, it’s not working, as I know.

Problem 2: You have to press delete the destination text before paste, If you paste it when the text “highlight”, it will become a hyperlink.

deletedlc
1 person likes this
  • deletedlc
    deletedlc
vdekkernl
  • vdekkernl
  • Active Member
  • 49 replies
  • September 1, 2021

This solves it!

Tibor
  • Tibor
  • New Member
  • 9 replies
  • Answer
  • June 22, 2022

I’m pasting text (CMD+SHIFT+V) from external sources into Figma components hundreds of times per session. Pasting overrides my formatting and I have to reset the Text style and the Fill which is a HUGE productivity killer to me.

I don’t think anyone would ever want to keep the formatting when pasting into any text field from outside Figma.

I certainly want to avoid installing another plugin to paste. Please make CMD+V an unstyled paste by default.

Update: CMD+SHIFT+V works well inside Figma and when you paste from outside, it doesn’t carry the formatting. This resolves the case for me.

Alan_Gornick
Rudel
KieranN
3 people like this
  • Alan_Gornick
    Alan_Gornick
  • Rudel
    Rudel
  • KieranN
    KieranN
thirdspace

In case it’s useful here or elsewhere, I use TextEdit on the Mac with the new document format set to Plain Text (in Preferences) as a kind of clipboard between applications for exactly this - copy from wherever, paste into Textedit, copy from Textedit, paste to destination.

Alan_Gornick

Having CMD + V include styles is causing problems for me as well. When designers copy and paste text between components it overrides their styles, thus breaking component instance inheritance. So when the design system needs to push updates, we can’t push updates to those styles as they have been overridden.

I never, ever want to copy and override styles with copy paste. I’m just trying to copy the plain text.

Getting people to consistently use the proper copy/paste function across a large organization of designers is not realistic.

Rudel
Max73
Jacopo_Faggian
3 people like this
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Marek.dg
  • Marek.dg
  • New Participant
  • 6 replies
  • August 3, 2022

The best solution would be for Figma to make the “plain text” the default.

But I’ve a workaround for the time till they fix it. But it’s only for Mac OS, don’t know if it can be achieved on Windows.

The workaround:
Add a custom keyboard shortcut in your Mac OS settings and use the menu titles as the path for the shortcut. Edit->Paste Over Selection and then choose “cmd + V” as the shortcut.
This works for me, and it doesn’t cause any problems (yet) with pasting other elements or instances.

More info:

Apple Support
👋❤️
Pete11
Rudel
Max73
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    CJ_Josephs
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    Jacopo_Faggian
Pete11
  • Pete11
  • 3 replies
  • August 9, 2022

Dang. I know in theory this should work but it didn’t for me for some reason.

Pete11
  • Pete11
  • 3 replies
  • August 9, 2022

This workaround did it for me:

Add a custom keyboard shortcut in your Mac OS settings and use the menu titles as the path for the shortcut. Edit->Copy As->Copy as Text and then choose “cmd + Shift + C” as the shortcut.

Ferdinand_Drechsel
1 person likes this
  • Ferdinand_Drechsel
    Ferdinand_Drechsel
Ferdinand_Drechsel

Thanks dude, you just saved potentially hours of my lifetime

Pete11
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  • Pete11
    Pete11
Ben_Rubenstein

The problem I’m having is:

  1. I copy text from the web- the text is a link
  2. I paste the text into Figma
  3. Figma turns the text into a link.
  4. Command-Shift-V does not solve this. It still pastes it as a link, where as I want plain, unlinked text.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to stop this from happening?

KelseyONeill
Preben2
2 people like this
  • KelseyONeill
    KelseyONeill
  • Preben2
    Preben2
D

there’s a bug in this

KelseyONeill

This is what I am trying to figure out too. it also brings bullet points and underlines over with shift+cmd+v

Aron_Boros

why is there no paste as plain text? how can i paste a URL text and not the “<title>” of the page with hyperlinked text? i’m literally going insane over these…

almost every tool has “cmd+shift+v” for this, its bizarre how a “ux design” tool would decide to go in different ways

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