Clipboard enhancement
The Windows clipboard is a very useful tool for copying things (text, images, hyperlinks, files and much more) and pasting them elsewhere. The most obvious use for the clipboard is for copying and pasting text in a word processor like Word or WordPad, but the copy and paste function in almost every program makes use of the clipboard. It also works between programs, so you can copy text from a web browser and paste it into a spreadsheet. Of course, the program you are pasting into needs to be able to use the item you’re pasting – you can’t paste an image into Windows Notepad, for example.
Add a clipboard gadget
The clipboard has one irritating limitation – you can only use it to copy one item at a time. If you copy another item, it will replace anything you’ve currently got in the clipboard. Wouldn’t it be useful to be able to copy several things and then select the one you want to paste? There’s a gadget for Windows 7 and Vista that does exactly this. Go to http://bit.ly/exptips1233 and install Clipboard Manager. If it doesn’t immediately appear, right-click the Desktop and select Gadgets (in Windows 7), or start the Sidebar (in Vista), and add it. Clipboard Manager shows the most recent items that were copied to the clipboard and you can click any of them to make it current – the one that’ll be pasted into a program. The size of the gadget limits the number of clipboard items that are visible but clicking the More link at the top shows all the items – 250 by default but up to 999 if you want to configure it.
Copy multiple items in Firefox
If you are browsing the web using Firefox and you want to copy some text, you can highlight it with the mouse and then press Ctrl+C. You can then switch to another program and press Ctrl+V to paste it in. If there are several items on the web page you want to copy, you could repeat the process or, better still, copy them all in one go. Click and drag over the first block of text to select it and then hold down the Ctrl key as you click and drag over other blocks of text on the page. When you’ve selected everything, press Ctrl+C and all the selected blocks are copied to the clipboard and can be pasted elsewhere.
Automatic copy in Chrome
If you copy a lot of text from web pages, you should use Google Chrome with the AutoCopy extension. Select any text on the page and it is automatically copied to the clipboard, without you having to click a menu or press a key. It’s even better when used with the Clipboard Manager gadget because you can browse the web, selecting text as you go, and each item will automatically be copied to the clipboard and stored. You can then browse through all the items and copy and paste them afterwards. To install extensions, you need Google Chrome Beta 4 (www.google.com/landing/chrome/beta). Then download the AutoCopy extension from www.chromeextensions.org/utilities/autocopy.
Take the clipboard with you
If you use more than one computer, either at home or between home and work, you might find it useful to have a single clipboard manager to use on both. Visual Clipboard (www.visualclipboard.com/download.html) does this, and comes in a portable version. Just unzip the file and put it on a USB memory drive. When the program is run, it restores all the items you copied to the clipboard, no matter which PC you copied them on. Hold down Ctrl and click the mouse or press Ctrl+Alt+V to display the Visual Clipboard window and then select the item you want to paste from a list. A small Desktop widget shows the current clipboard text and you can click the icon to display the clipboard history.
More clipboard tools
There are many more clipboard tools and they all have a slightly different set of features and functions. Some will be more suitable for your particular needs than others, so try them out and see which you like best. Here are just some of the tools you can try: Clipdiary (http://clipdiary.com/karpolan2.php), ClipMate Clipboard Exender (www.thornsoft.com), PasteCopy.NET (www.pastecopy.net) and xNeat Clipboard Manager (www.xneat.com/clipboardmanager).
Source of Information : WebUser February 11 2010
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