Disable Select an Object when creating a rule

I have a Rich text area field on an object that is loading to a Textarea field in SFDC.  It appeared in SFDC with all of the HTML code in addition to the text.  I discovered that I needed to use Prepare Dataset to strip the HTML out.  I think it would be better to just choose the latter because you can pick a single object.  I realize that for Select an Object it says “If the data is ready to use and is stored in a single Object” but it’s hard to anticipate that ready to use has unexpected limitations.

thanks

dave