We are all familiar with the native Windows Clipboard. This virtual clipboard lets you copy an item to it (by pressing CTRL + C), then paste the item into another application. The Clipboard even stores the item for a limited time. So, you can copy a paragraph from an open Microsoft Word document, then open an Excel worksheet and paste the text into a cell. Great! But there are several limitations of the Windows Clipboard. First, the Windows clipboard works well for cutting and pasting a single item at a time, but if you want to move a series of items, you are out of luck. Second, the Windows clipboard can only retain an item until Windows is shut down. If you want to eliminate both of these limitations as well as a host of others, you need ClipMate!

Rather than working with one piece of clipboard data at a time, ClipMate enhances the native Windows clipboard functionality by remembering all items (both text and graphic) copied to the clipboard and storing them in "collections" for later pasting. With ClipMate as a Windows companion, you can capture as much as you want to — without losing time toggling between applications and pasting. When you are ready to work the captured text or images, they are all stored in one, easy-to-find place.

ClipMate in Action

Using ClipMate is as easy as using the Windows Clipboard. Just copy text or images as you ordinarily would. For example, take a screen shot by selecting a dialog and pressing ALT + PRT SCR. In fact, take several screen shots in a row. ClipMate stores all these screen shots until you are ready to work with them. (The hardest thing to get used to when working with ClipMate is that you don't have to copy & paste, copy & paste, copy & paste, etc.

Just click the scroll-down arrow to view all of the captures.

As shown in the following screenshot, the upper window lists all of the captures. The lower window provides snapshots of what the files contain.

When you are ready to export all of the items as a group, just select File > Export from the main menu.

The Export Clips dialog allows you to choose how to name the files and where to copy them. You can even choose to save BITMAPS as JPEGs and select compression quality. All the exported files appear in the specified directory.

ClipMate also contains an Explorer view. The Explorer enables you to select, preview, edit and manage captures.

Additional Features

ClipMate contains many other robust features. The Preview/Edit window contains powerful tools to help you manage your text data and view your graphic images or activate Internet links. An exclusive PowerPaste™ feature puts ClipMate in "rapid fire" mode, allowing you to quick-paste a series of items into an application. ClipMate 5 also includes many features for Internet users. You can view HTML data right in ClipMate. If you are working with raw HTML tags, you can see what they would look like as HTML.

While most of these additional features are nice, they are not spectacular. However, one feature is really worth the price of admission . . .

• Email Cleanup
  This feature cleans up your emails so they lose the messy look. For example, if you receive an email that is full of >> marks (something that often happens as a result of forwarded email) or all CAPS, you can fix this quickly and easily. Just use one of the Cleanup options from the main menu (Edit > Clean-up Text...).

The Cleanup Options dialog allows to strip out any character from any line. It can remove linebreaks, and even "re-break" lines at a specified column. You can also fix letter case as desired. Just select the options that you want and click OK.

ClipMate is a fabulous little tool, well worth its $20-$25 price. For more information about this exciting software, visit www.clipmate.com.

System Requirements

Windows 95/98/NT/2000 1.23 MB hard drive space