HTML to Text

How to use the html to text

1. Paste HTML, or send it here from another tool.
2. Choose whether to keep link URLs and list markers.
3. Copy the text, or download it.

About this tool

Removing tags with a regular expression is the obvious approach and it produces a mess: the contents of `<script>` and `<style>` survive as text, so a stripped page arrives as a wall of JavaScript and CSS with the article buried somewhere inside. Those elements are removed here with their contents, which is the single difference between a usable result and a useless one.

Structure is kept where plain text can carry it. Block elements become line breaks rather than running together, list items get a hyphen, and table cells are separated by tabs so a copied row lands in the right columns of a spreadsheet. Entities are decoded, so `&amp;` becomes an ampersand rather than staying as five characters.

Links are the interesting decision. A link's text alone loses the destination entirely, which matters in an email or a printed page where nothing is clickable, so the URL can be kept in brackets after the text. A link whose text is already the URL does not get it repeated.

This reads markup as text rather than rendering it, which means it does not run scripts, load anything or execute CSS — that is why it is safe to paste a page from somewhere you do not trust.

Common uses

• Getting the readable text out of a web page or an email.
• Producing a plain text version of an HTML newsletter.
• Cleaning markup out of content before reusing it.

Frequently asked questions

Why do other tools leave CSS and JavaScript in the output?

Because stripping tags with a pattern removes the tags but leaves what was inside them. Script and style content has to be removed along with its element, which is what happens here.

What happens to links?

You choose. The text alone reads better; the URL in brackets after it keeps the destination, which matters anywhere the text will not be clickable.

Is it safe to paste a page from anywhere?

Yes. The markup is read as text rather than rendered, so nothing loads, runs or executes.