USE CASE
Fix the line breaks in text copied from a web page
Text copied from a web page can have unwanted line breaks and trailing spaces. Use Copy & Prep to tidy them before copying the text to another app.
Copy & Prep tidies text you select on a web page and add to its list. It cannot import text from the clipboard or a text file.
Copied text breaks in the middle of sentences
A web page shows its text wrapped to a comfortable width, and the selection follows what is displayed. Paste it somewhere else and the line breaks come along mid-sentence, sometimes with trailing spaces attached.
Where you pasted it, the width is different, so those break positions mean nothing. They stay in the text as characters all the same, and the paragraph reads badly.
Fixing line breaks by hand
Usually it comes down to one of two things:
- Put the cursor at the end of a line, press Delete, and repeat once per paragraph
- Replace the line breaks in bulk — and lose the paragraph boundaries along with them
Replacing every line break can remove ones you need. Lists, tables and code depend on their line breaks for structure, so removing them all can create more work.
The same job with Copy & Prep
- 1
Select text on a page and choose "Add to Copy & Prep" from the right-click menu.
- 2
Open the settings tab and press "Tidy up". The before and the after appear side by side.
- 3
Check the result, then apply it. Nothing changes if you do not, and even after applying, one step takes the passage back to what you originally selected.
- 4
Press "Copy all" to write it out. Choose plain text or Markdown.
Only wrapped lines within a paragraph are joined, and trailing whitespace is removed. Line breaks in bullet lists stay in place.
What this looks like in practice
Pasting a quote into an email or a report
No rebuilding the paragraph after you paste. Whether to tidy is decided per item.
Carrying an explanation that contains lists or tables
Lists and tables keep their structure while unwanted breaks within paragraphs are removed. Choose Markdown to copy the text into an app that supports it.
Fixing several pages worth in one pass
What you collected stays in the list. Tidy it once you have finished reading and write it all out together.
What Copy & Prep does
- Rejoins only the wrapping inside a paragraph
- Removes the trailing whitespace left at the ends of lines
- Keeps the structure of bullet lists, numbered lists, tables and code
- Shows the before and the after side by side before anything is applied
- Takes a tidied passage back to the originally captured text in one step
- Lets you collect several pages worth first, then copy it all at once
- Stores everything in chrome.storage.local and makes no network requests
What Copy & Prep does not do
- Take in text from the clipboard or from a file. It works on passages you selected on a page and added
- Substitute characters. Non-breaking and ideographic spaces are left exactly as captured
- Summarize, rephrase or proofread. Tidying touches whitespace and line breaks only
- Re-wrap the body in Markdown syntax. Changing the output format leaves the text itself alone
- Reformat without asking. Nothing changes until you press apply
The tool for this job
Features, permissions and privacy are set out in full on the product page.
Copy & Prep A Chrome extension that collects text from several pages, tidies it up, and copies it all at once See what it does →