How to use it
- Paste the text that contains accented letters.
- Choose extra options: simplify punctuation, lowercase, spaces.
- Check the note below the result for any remaining non-ASCII characters.
- Copy or download the plain text.
What the tool does
Accented letters are made of a base letter plus a mark: é is e with an acute accent, ñ is n with a tilde, ü is u with an umlaut. The tool separates each letter into its base and its marks (Unicode normalization) and keeps only the base:
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| café, naïve, résumé | cafe, naive, resume |
| jalapeño, piñata | jalapeno, pinata |
| Zoë, Björk, Ångström | Zoe, Bjork, Angstrom |
| Łódź, Dvořák | Lodz, Dvorak |
A few letters are not "letter plus accent" in Unicode, so they get a fixed replacement: ß becomes ss, æ becomes ae, ø becomes o, œ becomes oe, ł becomes l, đ becomes d and þ becomes th.
The conversion runs entirely in your browser.
Options
- Simplify typographic marks. Turns curly quotes (“ ” ‘ ’) into straight ones (" '), en and em dashes into hyphens, the ellipsis character into three dots, and non-breaking spaces into normal spaces.
- Lowercase. Converts everything to lowercase after removing accents.
- Spaces. Keep them, or replace them with hyphens or underscores, or remove them.
Below the result you'll see whether the output is pure ASCII. If anything is left, such as emoji, Chinese characters or symbols like € or ©, the note lists them so you can decide what to do.
When you need accent-free text
- File names. Some older systems, servers and zip tools mangle accented file names. Résumé – José.pdf becomes a safe Resume - Jose.pdf.
- URLs and slugs. Web addresses work best with plain ASCII. For a complete URL slug with hyphens and length limits, use the slug generator.
- Usernames and email addresses. Many systems accept only ASCII letters.
- Data matching. When one list has Muñoz and another has Munoz, removing accents from both makes them match.
- Legacy software and SMS. Some systems still show accented characters as garbled symbols.
Keep the original accented version wherever people will read it. In names especially, accents are part of the correct spelling.
Batch cleanup for spreadsheets and lists
The tool keeps line breaks, so you can paste a whole column from a spreadsheet, convert it, and paste it back in the same order. A typical workflow for a customer list:
- Copy the name column from your spreadsheet.
- Paste it here and remove accents (keep spaces as they are).
- Copy the result and paste it into a new column next to the original.
- Use the new column for matching, deduplication or exports to systems that only accept ASCII.
Keeping the original column means you never lose the correct spelling of people's names.
Accents and sorting
Removing accents can also help when you need simple A–Z sorting in a system that doesn't understand accented letters. Most modern tools already sort é next to e, so try the alphabetical order tool first.
Be careful with languages where accents change meaning. In Spanish, año (year) and ano are different words, and in German schön is more correctly written schoen than schon if you can't use the umlaut. If the text will be read by native speakers, keep the accents or use the conventional replacement for that language.
Frequently asked questions
How do I remove accents from text?
Paste the text into the box. Accented letters are replaced with their plain versions immediately, for example café becomes cafe.
Does it handle ß, æ and ø?
Yes. These have fixed replacements: ß becomes ss, æ becomes ae, ø becomes o, œ becomes oe.
What happens to emoji and symbols?
They are kept. The note below the result lists any characters that are still not plain ASCII.
Can it replace spaces with hyphens?
Yes. Use the Spaces option to replace spaces with hyphens or underscores, or remove them.
Is the text uploaded?
No, everything runs in your browser.
Last updated: November 12, 2026