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Paste as plain text

Written byPhuoc Nguyen
Created
19 Mar, 2020
Category
Level 2 — Intermediate
Assume that we have a `contenteditable` element as below:
html
<div contenteditable id="editor"></div>
In order to paste the plain text only in the element, we have to handle the `paste` event:
js
const editorEle = document.getElementById('editor');

// Handle the `paste` event
editorEle.addEventListener('paste', function (e) {
// Prevent the default action
e.preventDefault();

// Get the copied text from the clipboard
const text = e.clipboardData
? (e.originalEvent || e).clipboardData.getData('text/plain')
: // For IE
window.clipboardData
? window.clipboardData.getData('Text')
: '';

if (document.queryCommandSupported('insertText')) {
document.execCommand('insertText', false, text);
} else {
// Insert text at the current position of caret
const range = document.getSelection().getRangeAt(0);
range.deleteContents();

const textNode = document.createTextNode(text);
range.insertNode(textNode);
range.selectNodeContents(textNode);
range.collapse(false);

const selection = window.getSelection();
selection.removeAllRanges();
selection.addRange(range);
}
});
Try to paste some rich text in the following `contenteditable` element:

Demo

See also

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