Clean ChatGPT Text for Outlook —
Remove Asterisks & Markdown Instantly

To copy and paste from ChatGPT to email, first clean the text before placing it in Outlook. Copy your ChatGPT draft, paste it into CleanTextTools, click Clean for Outlook, then copy the cleaned version into your Outlook email. This removes markdown, asterisks, filler phrases, broken spacing, and visible formatting symbols before you send.

To clear text formatting in Outlook, select the text inside your email draft and use the Clear Formatting option from the ribbon. Microsoft explains that clearing formatting can remove styles such as bold, underline, italics, color, superscript, and subscript, returning text to its default style. CleanTextTools is different because it removes ChatGPT markdown characters before they reach Outlook.

Yes, Outlook has a Conversation Clean Up feature, but it is not designed to clean ChatGPT text formatting. Microsoft's Conversation Clean Up reviews email threads and removes redundant messages that are already included in later replies. For ChatGPT asterisks, markdown, spacing issues, and filler phrases, use CleanTextTools before pasting into Outlook.

In Outlook, Conversation Clean Up helps reduce duplicate messages inside an email thread. It reviews the conversation and removes older messages that are already included in later replies. This helps organize your inbox, but it does not remove ChatGPT markdown, asterisks, paragraph symbols, or weird formatting from email drafts.

To copy from ChatGPT to Word without losing formatting online, clean the text first, then paste the cleaned version into Word. CleanTextTools removes markdown symbols, asterisks, headings, bullet markers, and spacing problems while keeping the original wording. This same clean-first workflow also works when copying ChatGPT text into Outlook email.

Asterisks appear in Outlook because ChatGPT often uses markdown formatting for bold and italic text. Outlook does not always convert markdown into rich formatting, so symbols like **bold**, *italic*, # headings, and backticks may appear as visible text. CleanTextTools removes these symbols before you paste into Outlook.

Paste as Plain Text removes font styles, colors, and some rich formatting, but it does not remove markdown characters because asterisks, pound signs, and backticks are already plain text. CleanTextTools removes the actual markdown symbols, not just the visual styling.

Weird symbols in Outlook can come from formatting marks, paragraph marks, markdown characters, or hidden spacing copied from AI tools. If the symbols are Outlook formatting marks, you can turn them off in Outlook settings. Microsoft says formatting marks can be managed from a new email message by going to File → Options → Mail → Editor Options → Display. If the symbols came from ChatGPT, clean the text with CleanTextTools before pasting.

To get your Outlook display back to normal, first check whether formatting marks are turned on. In Outlook, open a new email, go to File → Options → Mail → Editor Options → Display, then uncheck the formatting marks you do not want to see. If your issue comes from ChatGPT text, use CleanTextTools to remove asterisks, markdown, extra spacing, and filler phrases.

The best workflow is: copy the ChatGPT output, clean it before pasting, remove markdown and hidden formatting issues, then rebuild only the email formatting you actually need inside Outlook. This avoids visible asterisks, broken bullets, strange spacing, and unprofessional AI-style email formatting.