How to Clean Text Copied From Microsoft Copilot

There is no published evidence that Copilot inserts hidden characters as a watermark, and this page does not claim it. Hidden characters in copied Copilot text more often come from the chat page's HTML, from source documents the answer drew on, or from Word and Outlook when you paste there. A cleaner reports what is actually present.

Turn on the 'Strip Markdown' toggle in Advanced Controls, or select the Markdown to Text preset. It removes symbols such as ## headings, **bold** markers and link syntax, leaving plain text. Strip Markdown is off in the default presets, so switch it on when you paste into a plain-text field.

Copilot in a browser copies rich HTML and plain text together, and the destination chooses which to use. Word and Outlook keep formatting by default. Paste with Keep Text Only, or paste into the cleaner first and copy the plain result. Copilot inside Word or Outlook works on the document directly and is a different case.

Character cleaners do not remove citation markers because they are ordinary text. If the numbers appear as [1], [2] in your paste, remove them with find and replace using the regular expression \[\d+\]. Check first that the numbers are not part of your content, such as an array index in code.

No. Detectors look at word patterns and sentence statistics, not at spacing or dashes. Cleaning is for formatting, privacy and debugging. It is not a way to pass AI work off as human, and you should follow any disclosure rules that apply to your school or workplace.