How to use the text cleaner
- 1 Paste your text into the Your text box.
- 2 Tick the cleaning options you want.
- 3 The cleaned text appears instantly, with the number of characters removed.
- 4 Copy or download the result.
Why smart quotes and pasted HTML cause trouble
- Curly quotes and long dashes look nice in a document but break code, CSV files and some forms. The cleaner turns them into plain ' " and -.
- HTML tags come along when you copy from a website or an email editor; stripping them leaves only the words.
- Emojis, links, emails and numbers can be removed when you need text for analysis or anonymised samples.
Options run in a fixed order, so the result is the same every time. If you only need one fix, the single tools are faster: Remove Extra Spaces, Remove Line Breaks or Remove Duplicate Lines.
Features
13 cleaning options
From HTML and quotes to emojis, links and numbers.
HTML to plain text
Strip tags and keep the readable text and line breaks.
Smart quotes fixed
Curly quotes and dashes become plain characters.
Invisible characters
Remove zero-width and odd spaces.
When to use it
Copy from websites
Clean text copied with formatting and tags. Only spacing to fix? Remove Extra Spaces is quicker.
Data preparation
Remove links and emails before analysis. Join broken lines with Remove Line Breaks.
Plain-text emails
Fix quotes and dashes that display badly. Count words of the clean text with the Word Counter.
Content reuse
Prepare text for a new document or CMS. Replace specific words with Find and Replace.
Related Text tasks
Frequently asked questions
What are smart quotes?
Curly quotation marks that word processors add automatically. Some websites, code editors and systems show them as strange symbols, so plain quotes are safer.
Will removing non-English characters delete accents?
Yes. That option keeps only basic English letters, numbers and punctuation, so use it only when you need plain ASCII text.
Can I clean HTML into plain text?
Yes. Tick Remove HTML tags. Paragraphs and line breaks become new lines.
How do I remove only blank lines?
Tick Remove empty lines and untick the other options.
Can I remove emojis from text?
Yes. Turn on remove emojis and every emoji is deleted while letters, numbers and punctuation stay.
How do I remove links and email addresses?
Turn on remove URLs and remove emails. This is handy for sharing a text sample without personal details.
In what order are the options applied?
Options always run in the same fixed order, whichever ones you tick first, so the same settings always give the same result.
What does remove invisible characters do?
It deletes zero-width spaces, soft hyphens and similar characters that you cannot see but that break searches, sorting and form validation.
Can I remove numbers or punctuation?
Yes. Turn on remove numbers or remove punctuation to keep only words, which is useful for word lists and text analysis.
Should I use the text cleaner or a single tool?
Use the text cleaner when text has several problems at once, such as HTML, curly quotes and extra spaces. For one problem, the single tool is quicker.
How this tool works. These text tools run entirely in your browser with plain JavaScript, so the text you paste never leaves your device and results update as you type. Each tool is tested with real text such as copied PDFs, emails, code, lists, emojis and non-English scripts before it goes live.
Built and reviewed by Hamza Farooq, founder and lead developer
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