Gmail and Text Formatting on a Mac: My Biggest Pet Peeve, Solved

Photo by Jeff Sheldon via Unsplash

I am a person who likes order. One of my now-defunct blogs is called “The Structured Artist,” because that’s exactly who I am – someone who loves creativity and art, but also thrives when routine and organization are in place. Because of this, I prefer that my regularly-used copy tools (Bean, Microsoft Word, Gmail) always have the same formatting. Otherwise, my head starts to do that thing where everything shakes and I can’t see straight. Like in a movie, right before the psychopath is about to murder somebody. But not quite as dramatic or lethal.

“Enough!” I said, just like Jennifer Lopez in that movie. But again, not as dramatic.

Anyway, when I copied & pasted a few blog post links to send along to a client, I decided to finally Google the thing I’ve been putting off for months years. I typed in something poetic like, “How do I fix that copy paste formatting Gmail thing,” and someone out there knew exactly what I was talking about. Up popped this article with a title that pulled on my heartstrings: Fixing My Most Common Gmail Annoyance. Yes, I thought. Someone gets me.

Turns out, the fix is so easy it’s embarrassing. In Gmail, there’s a little “Tx” symbol on the bottom right of the “Compose” screen. When you highlight the copied/pasted text and then click that symbol, the formatting becomes whatever you’ve pre-chosen for Gmail. So. Easy.

Before:

During:

After:

This is the over-excited comment I left on the article:

Ahhh, thank you!!! That is one of my biggest annoyances. I wonder how many minutes (hours) I’ve spent choosing the right font after copying/pasting. After YEARS of telling myself I’ll figure it out one day, I decided to finally Google it & up came your article with an answer within seconds. I wonder how many people continue to do the same annoying thing time after time, not knowing there’s a simple solution one search away…

If you’re a Mac user, you can also download Magic Clipboard for $1.99, which is similar to the now defunct FormatMatch, which I luckily installed before it went away. Get Magic Clipboard for less than two bucks right now.

Do you guys have any pet peeves that drive you everything-is-shaking crazy? Do tell.

Welcome (Back) to the Poison Apple, Ink. Blog

Does anyone else have the Welcome Back, Kotter theme song in their head? No? You’re all too young? Hey, I’m only 32, stop judging me!

Anyway…

Once upon a time (like, yesterday), Poison Apple, Ink. lived a beautiful life on Weebly. The drag-and-drop editor is great if you need tons of control, but for this blog, I need to get posts up and/or scheduled quickly & constantly. For that, WordPress is king.

Also, I’ve decided to do less services selling and more marketing informing this time around. Trust me, I’m a better writer than the previous sentence displays. I just have a bit of a headache (and there’s a movie on in the background), so I’m a bit distracted.

I say “bit” a lot, FYI. It’s like I’m British, except I’m from New York.

Return here over and over to find information about digital marketing, freelancing, succeeding in business, failing in business, succeeding in business after failing, failing in business after succeeding, and everything else that the crazy, confusing, heartbreaking and wonderful world of self-employment has to offer.

I’ll help you make sense of social media, Google ads, SEO, iPhone apps, online tools, newsletters, and pretty much whatever I come across during my days, so long as it relates to my professional life. In truth, everything relates to my professional life because I don’t have time for anything else. I know you can relate.

I look forward to having conversations about the good, the bad and the really, really bad of entrepreneurship.

– Lindsay