Windows XP Hacks

Store Multiple Clips and Boilerplate Text with a Better Clipboard

If you need to store clipboard text and images (or “clips”) permanently and call them back whenever you need them, use this XP clipboard enhancer.

I make my living as a writer (or at least, I try to), and because of that I need to store text, articles, and graphics all day. When gathering research, I need to keep copies of what I find, so that I can paste them into documents for easy access. When writing books, I need to store special coding that I have to insert into my manuscript so that the typesetting comes out right. And I also have email signatures I like to pop into certain emails. In fact, like most people, I have a need for storing reusable boilerplate text of all kinds.

I can’t use the XP Clipboard to do any of that for me, though. As far as it goes, the Clipboard is fine—a kind of waystation where you can store a single clip at a time before you pop the clip into another application. But it doesn’t store more than a single clip at a time, so it isn’t suitable for my needs.

Instead of the Clipboard, I use ClipCache Plus (http://www.clipcache.com), which is shareware and free to try, and $19.95 if you decide to keep using it. It captures all clips and lets me organize them into folders and then reuse any clip when I need it, as shown in Figure 8-1. As you can see, it retains all formatting of the original clip. It captures files of any kind—including graphics, spreadsheets, and word processing files, as well ...