Text Cleaner: Strip HTML, Fix Whitespace, Remove Invisible Characters

TL;DR — Paste any messy text into the Text Cleaner, toggle the operations you need, copy the cleaned output. Pair with the Word Counter to verify length and the Case Converter for capitalization fixes.

The hidden gunk in copy-pasted text

Text from PDFs, Word docs, Slack, and rendered web pages carries invisible junk that breaks downstream processing:

• Multiple consecutive spaces from justified paragraphs.
• Zero-width characters (U+200B, U+FEFF) from rich-text exports — invisible but very real.
• Smart quotes (“ ” ‘ ’) that break JSON parsing and SQL queries.
• Soft hyphens (U+00AD) that appear out of nowhere in CSV imports.
• Stray HTML when you copy from a rendered webpage instead of the source.
• Mixed line endings (CRLF vs LF) that show up as control characters in some editors.

What the Text Cleaner does

• Trim whitespace — strip leading/trailing space from every line.
• Collapse multiple spaces into one.
• Remove all line breaks (or replace with commas, custom delimiter).
• Strip HTML tags while keeping the visible text.
• Convert smart quotes to straight ASCII quotes.
• Remove invisible Unicode (zero-width spaces, BOM, soft hyphens).
• Normalize line endings to LF or CRLF.
• Remove duplicate lines (link to dedicated Duplicate Remover for advanced cases).

Clean text in 10 seconds

1. Open the Text Cleaner.
2. Paste the messy input.
3. Toggle the operations you want (each runs live).
4. Copy the cleaned output, or download as a file.

Real situations this saves

• CSV imports failing because a column has zero-width chars in headers.
• SQL syntax errors from smart quotes pasted into a query.
• JSON parse failures from “key” instead of "key".
• Email merge bugs where names have invisible trailing whitespace.
• Content migrations from a CMS that exports rich HTML when you wanted plain text.

FAQ

Why does my pasted text look fine but break in my code?

Invisible characters. Run it through the Text Cleaner with "remove invisible Unicode" on and the problem usually disappears.

What are smart quotes?

The curly typographic quotes (“ ” ‘ ’) that Word and macOS autocorrect insert. They look prettier in prose but break code, JSON, and database queries that expect ASCII straight quotes.

Can I clean text without removing line breaks?

Yes — every operation toggles independently. Leave line-break handling off if you want to preserve structure.

Text-prep toolkit

• Text Cleaner — strip everything that doesn’t belong.
• Word Counter — verify length after cleaning.
• Case Converter — fix capitalization.