How to copy only plain text of cells in Excel?

Question

I am designing an Excel worksheet where the user will click a command button which copies a predetermined range of cells. The user would then paste the contents into a web app using Firefox or IE. The design of the web app is out of my control and currently the text boxes that are used for data input are rich text inputs. This causes the text to look odd and formatted like Excel when the user pastes into them.

Is there a way in Excel using VBA to copy only the plain text of the cells that are selected? No formatting, no tabling or cell borders, just the text and nothing else. My current workaround macro is copying the cells, opening Notepad, pasting into Notepad, and then copying from Notepad to get the plain text. This is highly undesirable and I'm hoping there's a way to do this within Excel itself. Please let me know, thanks!

Solution 1

Something like this?

Sheet1.Cells(1, 1).Copy
Sheet1.Cells(1, 2).PasteSpecial xlPasteValues

Or

selection.Copy
Sheet1.Cells(1,2).Activate
Selection.PasteSpecial xlPasteValues

Copy copies the entire part, but we can control what is pasted.

Same applies to Range objects as well.

EDIT

AFAIK, there is no straighforward way to copy only the text of a range without assigning it to a VBA object (variable, array, etc.). There is a trick that works for a single cell and for numbers and text only (no formulas):

Sub test()
    Cells(1, 1).Select
    Application.SendKeys "{F2}"
    Application.SendKeys "+^L"
    Application.SendKeys "^C"
    Cells(1, 3).Select
    Application.SendKeys "^V"
End Sub

but most developers avoid SendKeys because it can be unstable and unpredictable. For example, the code above works only when the macro is executed from excel, not from VBA. When run from VBA, SendKeys opens the object browser, which is what F2 does when pressed at the VBA view :) Also, for a full range, you will have to loop over the cells, copy them one by one and paste them one by one to the application. Now that I think better, I think this is an overkill..

Using arrays is probably better. This one is my favorite reference on how you pass ranges to vba arrays and back: http://www.cpearson.com/excel/ArraysAndRanges.aspx

Personally, I would avoid SendKeys and use arrays. It should be possible to pass the data from the VBA array to the application, but hard to say without knowing more about the application..

Solution 2

Actually, the best way to do this is to copy the cells and paste into a notepad. Notepad won't recognize the cells. You can then copy the text back into whatever cell you want. This works for copying text from multiple cells into a single cell.

Solution 3

Try this to copy whatever cell you have selected:

Sub CopyTheCell()
Dim TheText As String
TheText = Selection
ToClipboard TheText
End Sub

Function ToClipboard(Optional StoreText As String) As String
'PURPOSE: Read/Write to Clipboard
'Source: ExcelHero.com (Daniel Ferry)

Dim x As Variant

'Store as variant for 64-bit VBA support
  x = StoreText

'Create HTMLFile Object
  With CreateObject("htmlfile")
    With .parentWindow.clipboardData
      Select Case True
        Case Len(StoreText)
          'Write to the clipboard
            .setData "text", x
        Case Else
          'Read from the clipboard (no variable passed through)
            Clipboard = .GetData("text")
      End Select
    End With
  End With

End Function