Strip the tags from HTML and keep the readable text. Paragraphs and line breaks are preserved, list items become bullets, scripts and styles are dropped, entities are decoded, and link addresses can be kept in brackets. It's useful for plain-text versions of email and for cleaning up copied web content.
How to use it
- Paste your HTML.
- Choose whether to keep link addresses.
- Read the text.
- Copy it.
When it helps
- Making a plain-text version of an email template.
- Extracting readable text from a page.
- Cleaning copied web content.
- Preparing text for analysis.
Good to know
- Scripts and styles are removed entirely.
- Table cells are separated by tabs, which may need tidying afterwards.
- Content hidden only by CSS is still included, since styles aren't applied.
What is removed and kept
Scripts, styles, comments and head content are removed completely. Block elements such as paragraphs, headings and list items turn into line breaks, list items get a bullet, and table cells are separated by tabs. Entities like & and are decoded.
Links can keep their address in brackets, so the text stays useful when the link is lost.
Worked example: an email template
Paste the HTML of a newsletter and you get a plain-text version to attach as the alternative part of the email. Many mail services need both, and a good plain-text version helps deliverability and accessibility.
Check the result for broken layouts from tables, and edit by hand where needed.
Security note
The tool treats your HTML as text and never runs it, so it's safe to paste content from untrusted sources. It doesn't clean HTML for reuse on a web page though: for that you need a proper sanitiser.
Don't paste the output into an HTML page without escaping it.
Limits
CSS isn't applied, so content hidden by styles is still included, and text added by CSS isn't. Complex layouts with nested tables won't come out neatly. For scraping many pages, use a proper parser in code.
For small jobs and one-off clean-ups, this is quick and convenient.
Cleaning pasted web content
Copying text from a web page often brings along odd spacing, hidden characters and styles. Pasting the HTML here first gives clean text with sensible paragraphs. Afterwards, the Line Break Remover and Find and Replace can tidy any leftovers.
That chain of small tools handles most clean-up jobs.
Plain text and email deliverability
A well-formed plain-text part helps messages avoid spam filters and works for readers who prefer text-only email. Keep lines short, put links on their own lines, and make sure the message still makes sense without any images.
Questions
Does it keep bold?
No, plain text has no bold.
Does it fetch pages?
No, you paste the HTML.