How to use NotebookLM Remove Formatting
NotebookLM answers are built from your own sources, but its Copy button hands over Markdown: bold phrases keep their asterisks, bullets keep their dashes and tables keep their pipes once pasted into a document, and the citation chips that point back into your sources are not part of the copied text. Use the clean text in email, forms, messaging apps, or editors that show NotebookLM asterisks and heading marks literally; the switches above the editor keep URLs, list markers or code. Strip the Markdown from a NotebookLM answer before pasting it into notes, an email or a learning platform that shows the asterisks literally; every word of the summary stays as written. Text copied from ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini arrives as Markdown, so an email, a form or a chat app shows the asterisks, hashes and square brackets literally. This tool removes them with fixed find-and-replace rules: it never adds, removes or substitutes a word, and the counts above the result show how many symbols went. By default headings lose their hashes, bold and italic lose their asterisks and underscores, links keep their visible text, bullets become • and numbered items keep their numbers, code fences are removed and the code stays, and pipe tables become tab-separated rows. Tick Keep link URLs to get text (url), choose Remove under List markers for flowing prose, tick Keep code blocks to leave fenced code exactly as written, tick Tidy spacing to collapse doubled spaces and stacked blank lines, and tick Show what changed to see a word-level diff that proves only formatting moved. Identifiers such as snake_case_word and MY_ENV_VAR are left alone.
- Copy the text or table you want to fix.
- Paste it into the input above. The result updates instantly.
- Copy, download, share, or embed the finished result.
Frequently asked questions
How do I use NotebookLM Remove Formatting?
Copy the relevant content from NotebookLM, paste it into the editor above, and use the live result immediately.
Does this upload my NotebookLM conversation?
No. Conversion runs in your browser. Text is stored only when you explicitly create a share link.
Can I edit the converted NotebookLM result?
Yes. The result remains editable when copied or downloaded in an editable format.
Why does text copied from NotebookLM show asterisks and dashes?
NotebookLM renders its answers from Markdown, and the Copy button copies that Markdown rather than the rendered view. Word, Google Docs and most note apps paste it as literal text, so bold keeps its asterisks and each bullet keeps its dash. Pasting here turns those symbols back into formatting.
What happens to NotebookLM's source citations?
The numbered citation chips are links into your notebook and usually do not survive the copy. The converter never adds, removes or rewrites citations, so whatever text arrived here is what ends up in the document; add references by hand from the sources panel if the document needs them.