Features / Help

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Quick Clipboard Editor (QCE) is a FREE Windows editor. It gives you direct access to the Clipboard’s text allowing to quickly make the changes you need before pasting it to your target application. It remembers your past clips with all their formatting including images and allow to paste them back as they are or with text modifications.

  • do quick touch-ups to the text
  • spell check the text in the Clipboard
  • quickly paste clips from the Clipboard history
  • paste past clips with all their formatting (image, HTML, etc.)
  • paste current clip as text only (removing formatting)
  • pin frequently used clips at the top of the history menu ans assign frequently used clips to hotkeys
  • find and replace
  • insert or trim content on each line
  • keep or delete lines or characters based on various criteria
  • reformat paragraphs and clean-up punctuation
  • sort by all sort of criteria
  • change case of text or portion of text
  • convert text for various needs (HTML, XML, PHP, AHK, etc.)
  • encode the full Clipboard or an image to Base64 text and decode Base64 text
  • open and save text in the editor from/to file with various encoding and end-of-line formats;
  • save to a file the image currently in the Clipboard or from the the Clipboard history or load an image to the Clipboard;
  • backup/restore Clipboard binary content to disk;
  • save frequently used commands, add them to a menu or assign them to hotkeys
  • automate Clipboard transformations by launching saved commands from external applications (batch file, scripts, QAP favorites, etc.)

QCE is an directly connected to your Clipboard allowing to open it, do changes and send the edited text directly to your target application, all this in only a few clicks!

Quick Start

  • Download and install Quick Clipboard Editor here.
  • Open the editor with Ctrl + Middle Mouse button or with the keyboard shortcut Shift + Win + V.
    (Tip: If you do not use Windows Clipboard history, you can change this hotkey to simply Win + V)
  • Copy text or image from an application and edit it in QCE using the hotkey Ctrl + Win + C.
  • Paste the content of QCE to your application with the hotkey Ctrl + Win + V.
  • Get in touch with QCE developer Jean Lalonde to ask question, report bugs or make suggestions on the Quick Clipboard Editor Users Forum.

Tray Menu

  • Right-click on the QCE icon on the task bar to open the Tray menu.
  • Open the Editor window.
  • Open the Options or Help submenus.
  • Restore the QCE editor window position to the center of the screen (in case it stays invisible at startup).
  • Toggle the Suspend Hotkeys command.
  • Open the QCE Settings Folder where you can edit the Settings file QuickClipboardEditor.ini and find the SQLite database QCE-DB3.db.
  • Restart Quick Clipboard Editor or Exit Quick Clipboard Editor.

Upgrading from v1.2.x to QCE v2

QCE v2 maintain all the options settings from v1.2.x, including preferences for launch, hotkeys, editor window, history, etc. New options added in v2 are set with default values that you can edit in the Options window.

At its first execution, QCE v2 creates a new database file named QCE-DB4.db. It retrieves automatically Saved commands from your v1.2.x database (if it exists). However, because of the major changes in the history database structure, your past clips are not imported from v1 to v2 (your previous database file is not deleted but is renamed with the “IMPORTED” tag).

Normally, if you installed QCE with the Easy Setup file, QCE settings are saved in a folder named Quick Clipboard Editor under your Documents folder (usually C:\Users\User Name\Documents\Quick Clipboard Editor). If you choose to run QCE in portable mode (from the ZIP file), settings are saved in the folder where you unzipped and launched QCE.

Settings folder location

In both cases (setup or portable), the location of the settings folder can be changed with the command line parameter /Working:[working_dir_path]. For example, to launch QCE with settings in the folder C:\My QCE Settings, create a file shortcut and set the target to “C:\Program Files\Quick Clipboard Editor\QuickClipboardEditor.exe” “/Working:C:\My QCE Settings (including the double quotes).

EDITOR WINDOW

QCE editor containing text

General

  • To display the editor window, hit Ctrl + Middle Mouse Button or press Shift + Win + V (these shortcuts can be changed in the Options menu).
  • When displayed, the editor initially contains the actual text or image in the Clipboard. Its text is ready to be edited.
  • You can copy the selected text or image in any application and edit it immediately in QCE using the hotkey Ctrl + Win + C.
  • You can also display the History Quick Paste list with Shift + Ctrl + ` (backtick). See how to quickly paste the selected item by simply releasing the Ctrl key.

Viewing and Editing

  • The editor can be in one of these three modes.
    • Synced: When the content of the editor is identical to the current content of the Clipboard, any change in the Clipboard as you copy or cut text or images from any application (outside of QCE) is immediately reflected in the QCE editor in Synced mode.
    • History: You can retrieve previous clips from the Clipboard history in the editor by clicking the left ◀ and right ▶ arrow buttons. As long as you navigate in the history clips without editing the content, QCE remains in History mode.
    • Editing: As soon as the content of the editor differs from the Clipboard or from the last retrieved History clip, QCE changes to Editing mode and works as any editor. You can add pieces of text using the Edit menu commands Copy (Ctrl + C), Cut (Ctrl + X) and Paste (Ctrl + V) as you would do with any other editor.
  • When the editor is in Synced mode
    • It is synchronized with the Clipboard.
    • Copying or cutting text or images in any other application updates instantly the content of the editor.
  • When the editor is in Editing mode (for text content only at this time)…
    • You have access to a large set of tools in the Edit, Find/Replace, Sort, Change case and Convert menus described below.
    • You can revert changes in the editor using the Edit, Undo and Edit, Redo menus. You can also click the Cancel button to return to restore the current Clipboard in the editor.
    • When you’re done with your changes, click the Copy button to put the content of the editor back in the Clipboard or hit the Paste button to paste the content of the editor in the last active application (the window active before you activate the QCE editor).

Editor Window Settings

You can set your preferred settings for the Editor Window using the Options, Editor Window dialog box. These settings are described below in the Options section.

Tool Bar

QCE toolbar
  • The options in the tool bar above the editor box allows to select a Fixed width font, a Font size, the Always on top property of the editor and Word wrap.
  • Also, when the editor is in Synced state, you can reveal the end-of-line and tabs characters by checking the Invisible characters checkbox.

Bottom Buttons

QCE bottom buttons and status bar
  • Paste: the first button saves the content of the editor to the Clipboard, then switch to the last used application and paste the text at the cursor location in this window. If the current content from the Clipboard history contains various formats (image, HTML, etc.) the receiving application selects what format is pasted.
  • Paste Text: when the editor shows a clip containing various formats (text, HTML, RTF, etc.), the Paste Text button pastes the content of the editor but as text only.
  • Copy: this button saves the content of the editor to the Clipboard (it is enabled as soon as the editor’s content differs from the current Clipboard).
  • Cancel: this button reverts editor content to the current content of the Clipboard.
  • Close: to close the window.
  • History buttons: The arrow buttons ◀ and ▶ on each sides of the window retrieve clips from the Clipboard history collected by a QCE background task (load QCE at Windows startup to collect all your Clipboard changes). The left button retrieves the previous history clip and the right button returns to next clips. Left-clicking on the History buttons display the History menu (more info under Clipboard menu section below).
The History menu

Status Bar

  • The left section of the status bar shows the length of the editor’s content with the label Synced when the content is synchronized with the Clipboard, History when browsing the history clips or Editing when it is disconnected from the Clipboard or the Clipboard History.
  • The second section shows the current cursor position: line number, character position on current line (for the left side of the editor), position from the beginning and length of selected text. It also shows the ASCII code of the first character selected. If the editor contains an image, this section show the dimension of the image (width and height in pixels, and number of bytes of the image).
  • The last section shows the formats (text, image, HTML, RTF, etc.) currently in the Clipboard or in the history clip loaded in the editor. Click on this section to open the Inspect Clipboard dialog box to get more details on these formats.

Clipboard images

When QCE is synced and the Clipboard contains an image, this image is shown in the editor and the status bar indicates its dimensions. QCE also shows images retrieved from the Clipboard History. They can be previewed before you decide to paste it in your application. In the current version, these images can only be pasted. They cannot (yet) be edited.

QCE showing an image from the Clipboard History

History Search and Quick Paste windows

You can search and retrieve your past Clipboard clips in two similar windows: History Search and Quick Paste windows. Each window contains the list of the most recent clips from your Clipboard history. But, if they are identical in appearance, their features differ and each window has its own advantages.

History Search window

  • Open the History Search window from the QCE menu bar under Clipboard, History Search or press Ctrl+P.
  • The window is open with the most recent clip from your Clipboard history is selected.
  • Filter clips from the Clipboard history using the search box at the top of the window.
  • Select one or multiple clips using standard keyboard or mouse techniques.
  • Click a button at the bottom of the window or select an action from the context menu (Paste, Edit or Delete).
  • Users can paste, edit, or delete multiple clips in this window.
  • Clips are pasted in the QCE editor. A configurable separator is inserted between multiple clips.

Quick Paste window

  • From any application window, press Ctrl + ` (backtick) to open the window with the most recent clip selected.
  • Without releasing Ctrl, press ` (backtick) again to cycle through older clips (see “Quick Paste cycling” below).
  • Release the Ctrl key to exit Quick Paste cycling and paste the selected clip to the active application window.
  • Alternatively, press the Home key to filter clips using the search box.
  • Press the Win key to escape Quick Paste cycling and leave the window open after releasing the Ctrl key.
  • After exiting Quick Paste cycling, users can select any item and click a button or choose an action from the context menu (Paste, Paste Text, Edit, or Delete).
  • Only one item can be selected in the Quick Paste window (see History Search above for selecting multiple clips).
 

Quick Paste cycling

Click to see the full video with audio

As demonstrated in the animation on the right, while the Ctrl key is maintained pressed, you can:

  • hit the backtick key (`) the number of times required to scroll down in the list of previous clips and select the desired clip;
  • releasing the Ctrl key exits the cycling and pastes the selected clip in the active application window;
  • hit the Down and Up keys to select a previous clips in the history list and paste it in the active application when you release the Ctrl key;
  • also press the Shift key to paste the selected text in Text only when you release the Ctrl key;
  • hit the Home key to move the cursor to the Search box at the top of the window in order to filter the list;
  • hit Left Win or Right Win to escape the Quick Paste cycling (this avoids pasting when the Ctrl key is released), leaving the Quick Paste window open.

After you escaped the Quick Paste action, you can:

  • use the Down, Up, End and Home keys to select an history item in the list;
  • click the Search box at the top of the window (or hit Up key until you reach to Search box) and filter the list;
  • hit letters (a-z) or digits (0-9) to move the focus to the Search box and start a search (for technical reasons, only non-accentuated letters can be captured to change the focus to the text box);
  • hit the Paste or Paste Text buttons to paste the clip in the active application;
  • click Edit to load the selected clip in the editor;
  • click Delete to remove the selected clip from clipboard history;
  • click Close (or hit Esc) to to close the History Search window.
Quickly edit, paste formatted or paste text only
Filtering the Quick Paste list

When doing a search, you can do a more specific search by typing multiple sequences separated by space. For example, type qui cli to search items containing “qui” AND “cli”. You can align up to 5 words or sequences of characters.

Quick Paste Hotkey variations

In Options, Hotkeys, users can select the main hotkey (default: ` backtick). Three hotkey variations are available:

  1. Ctrl + `: Opens the “Quick Paste” window and pastes the selected clip when Ctrl is released.
  2. Shift + Ctrl + `: Opens the “Quick Paste” window and pastes the clip as text.
  3. Win + Ctrl + `: Opens the “Quick Paste” window and keeps it open after releasing Ctrl (exits Quick Paste cycling).

Tips

To paste immediately the current content of the Clipboard, simply hit and release the Quick Paste hotkey (by default Ctrl + `).

To paste in text only the current content of the Clipboard, simply hit and release the Quick Paste Text hotkey (by default Shift + Ctrl + `).

Settings under Options, Clipboard History section allow to:

  • select the size of image previews in History Search window, Quick Paste window and History menus;
  • select the font style (fixed or not) and font size of the History Search window;
  • remember the last History Search window position.

About regular expressions

Regular expressions can be used in three dialog boxes: Filter Lines, Find and Find and Replace.

RegEx syntax may vary slightly from one implementation to another. QCE follows the AutoHotkey RegEx syntax described here. In this implementation, specifying modes or options is done by adding options letters at the very beginning of the regular expression followed by a close-parenthesis. For example, the pattern i)abc would search for “abc” in upper or lower case. By default regex searches are case sensitive but the i) Ignore Case option makes them case insensitive. This option can be used in the three commands mentioned above.

In the Find and Replace command (beside), clicking the Ignore Case, Multiline and DotAll check boxes add the i), m) or s) options (or a combination) at the beginning of the search string. The Multiline option is useful combined with the circumflex ^ and dollar-sign $ that match the beginning and end of each line. This allows to apply a search and replace command to the beginning or end of each line of the text, not only at the very beginning or end of the editor content. In the example beside, when the word “end” is located at the end of a line, it will be replaced with “finish”, regardless of the case.

 

MENU BAR

File

With the File menu, you can save/load text or images and backup/restore the content of the Clipboard.

The Save file dialog box
  • Open text file (Ctrl+O) loads a text file to the editor, to the Clipboard or to both.
    • The text file can be loaded with various file encodings: ANSI, UTF-8, UTF-8 No BOM, UTF-16, UTF-16 No BOM and custom codepage. See the option Custom encoding under Options, Various to set the custom codepage (default 850).
    • An option allows to replace the whole editor content or insert the file at cursor position (or replace selection).
  • Save text file (Ctrl+E) saves to disk the text in the editor.
    • The text can be saved with various end-of-line encodings: Windows (CR/LF), Unix (LF) or Max (CR).
    • The text can be saved with various file encodings (same as above).
    • An option allows to save the whole editor or only the selected text.
  • Load image to Clipboard and replace the current content of the editor
    • Supported file types are: BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, Exif, WMF, and EMF.
  • Save image to file saves the image in the editor to a file of type set according to the file name extension.
    • Supported file types are: BMP, DIB, GIF, JFIF, JPE, JPEG, JPG, PNG, RLE, TIF and TIFF.
    • With JPEG formats, you can set a compression level ranging between 0 and 100.
  • Backup Clipboard saves the binary content of the Clipboard (including all formats) to a binary file.
  • Restore Clipboard loads a binary backup file to the Clipboard (including all formats).
  • Close the editor (Esc) closes the QCE window.
  • Restart Quick Clipboard Editor resets the editor (in case something goes wrong).
  • Exit Quick Clipboard Editor (Alt + F4) quits the application and stops Clipboard history collect.
 

Clipboard

The Clipboard menu give access to commands allowing to copy, paste or extract the content of the Clipboard in various ways.

  • Copy to the Clipboard (Ctrl + S) saves the editor content (with all its formats) to the Clipboard and return to the Synced mode.
  • Paste to the last active application saves the editor content to the Clipboard and paste it to the application active before you activated QCE. You can also hit the hotkey Ctrl + Win + V to paste the editor text in any active application window (this hotkey can be changed in the Options).
  • Paste as Text to the last active application saves the text in the editor to the Clipboard and paste this text to the application active before you activated QCE. This eliminates any formatting coming from web pages HTML or RTF copied in applications like Word.
  • Cancel changes and revert to the Clipboard restores the current Clipboard content in the editor.
  • Clipboard History submenu displays the last 25 clips form the Clipboard history . A clip selected in the menu is loaded in the editor.
  • History Search opens the Clipboard History Search box (see below).
  • Select Inspect Clipboard to review different formats in the Clipboard (see below).
  • Use Copy the text in the editor to Clipboard As Format… to load the source in the editor (HTML or RTF) or the list of files in the editor to the Clipboard.
  • Select Get the text or source code for Clipboard Format… to extract to the editor the the text only (without formatting), the source code of the HTML or RTF content of the Clipboard or the list of files copied in Explorer.
  • Select Pinned Clip to keep a frequently used clip at the top of the Clipboard History menu (or press F4) and use the same command to unpin a pinned clip.
  • Use hotkeys Alt + 1 to Alt + 0 to paste one of the pinned clips in the QCE editor.
  • Delete this history clip removes a clip from the history database.
  • Delete history database flushes the content of the Clipboard history.
QCE History menu open from the menu bar
Note: buttons were added to this windows after this screen capture.

Use the History Search allows to retrieve clips from your history database in the editor. Open it from the Clipboard, History Search menu or press Ctrl + P. To find a clip, simply type a few letters (see 1 in the screen shot below). The more letters you type the more precise is the search result. Clips containing these letters will be listed with most recent first. Only the first 250 characters are displayed but the history database contains the full clips.

By default, the first clip is already selected. You can use the usual keyboard and mouse techniques to to select another clip or multiple clips and press Enter to load it (or them) in the editor. You can also hit the Edit button (3) or double-click a clip to load it in the editor. To paste the selected clip at the cursor location in the editor, hit the Paste button (3). A configurable separator is inserted between items when editing or pasting multiple clips.

You can hit the Delete button to remove the selected clip(s) from the history database. Also, you can open the context menu (2) by right-clicking a clip. This menu allows to EditPaste or Delete the clip.

To do a more specific search in your clips, in the search box, type multiple sequences separated by space. For example, type qui cli to search items containing “qui” AND “cli”. You can align up to 5 words or sequences of characters.

Note: To search history items and retrieve them directly in other applications, see also Quick Paste list.

 

Clipboard formats

Inspect Clipboard

The Inspect Clipboard dialog box shows the various formats available for the content copied to the Clipboard or loaded in the editor from the Clipboard history. Applications saving data to the Clipboard can store different formats for various needs. In this example below, the text copied from MS Word can be pasted as Unicode text, HTML, RTF and other binary formats. You you paste the Clipboard, it is the receiving application that decides what format to retrieve. The CF_LOCALE indicate the localization of the content copied (3084 stands for French – Canada, in this example).

For each format, the dialog box indicates the format number (in decimal and hexadecimal), the format name (for example “CF_UNICODETEXT”), the size of the content and, when possible, the first characters of the content. Links give access to help on Clipboard formats and CF LOCALE Help from Microsoft website.

Some text formats can be retrieved in the editor by right-clicking on a format or using the Load button. For example, you can retrieve the HTML source code code the content saved by Word in the Clipboard. If the Clipboard content changed, you can hit Refresh to update the list.

Copy the text in the editor to Clipboard As Format

You can also save to the Clipboard the content of the editor in various formats with the Clipboard, Copy the text in the editor to Clipboard As Format. You can copy the text or source code in the Editor to the Clipboard in these formats:

  • Copy to Clipboard As HTML: load the HTML source in the editor to the Clipboard as HTML (allowing to paste it in an editor supporting HTML like MS Word).
  • Copy to Clipboard As RTF: load the RTF source in the editor to the Clipboard as Rich Text Format (allowing to paste it in an editor supporting RTF like MS Word).
  • Copy to Clipboard As Files: load a list of files in the editor to the Clipboard as Files (as when using the Copy command in Explorer) allowing to Paste them in Explorer or other file managers.
  • Cut to Clipboard As Files: load a list of files in the editor to the Clipboard (as when using the Cut command in Explorer) allowing to move them in Explorer or other file managers using the Paste command.

Get the text or source code for Clipboard Format

You can also load to the editor part of the clip content in a specific format with the command Clipboard, Get the text or source code for Clipboard Format. You can load in the editor the Clipboard content in these formats (if available):

  • Get Clipboard Text: load in the editor the text copied to the Clipboard (this is automatically done when copying text).
  • Get Clipboard HTML: load in the editor the HTML source code from the Clipboard.
  • Get Clipboard RTF: load in the editor the Rich Text Format source code from the Clipboard.
  • Get Clipboard Files: load in the editor the list of files copied to the Clipboard (this is automatically done when copying files).

Pin frequently used clips

To keep frequently used text snippets easily available, pin them in the History menu. Pinned clips stay at the top of the Clipboard History menu and can be pasted at the selection position in the editor using hotkeys Alt + 1 to Alt + 0.

To pin the text currently in the editor, select Clipboard, Pin this clip (or hit F4) to open the Pin this clip dialog box. Select the position for this clip. If you select a position currently assigned, the previous clip will be replaced. Then, click the Pin button to assign the new clip. To remove a pinned clip, select it and click Unpin.

Hit F4 to open the Pin this clip dialog box

Note: Only text clips can be pinned. Image clips cannot be pinned and only the text from multi-formats clips can be pinned.

Edit

  • You can open the Edit menu in the editor from the menu bar or using Right-Click or pressing Shift + F10.
  • The Undo (Ctrl+Z) and Redo (Ctrl-Y) commands allow to revert to a previous capture of the editor’s content.
  • The standard Edit menu commands Cut (Ctrl + X), Copy (Ctrl + C), Paste (Ctrl + V), Delete (Del) and Select All (Ctrl + A) work as in any editor.

Move line up / Move line down

  • Move the current line or the selected lines up or down.
  • Use the keyboard shortcuts Shift + Ctrl + Up or Shift + Ctrl + Down.
  • These commands are only available when Word wrap id disabled.

Spell checker

You can check the spelling of the entire text in the editor or check only the selected text. Select Edit, Spell check or press F7 to activate the spell checker. The Add Word button adds words not in the dictionary to your custom dictionary file QCE_SpellCheck_Custom.dic saved in the dic folder under the QCE settings folder.

In Options, Editor window, you can select a primary language (the default dictionary used when you launch QCE) and a secondary dictionary. You can alternate between these two dictionaries by selecting Edit, Switch spell check language or by pressing F7.

QCE uses the open source software Hunspell with dictionaries distributed on the LibreOffice repository. When installed, QCE includes dictionary files for English, French, Spanish and German. You can add dictionary for other languages: go to this Hunspell dictionaries repository, select a language and for the .AFF and .DIC files, click plain link (in the right column) and save the files to the dic folder under your settings folder. Once added, the new dictionaries appear under the Options, Editor window dialog box.

Saved commands

Commands used frequently (like Insert string, SortReformat paragraphFind and replace, etc.) can be configured once and saved in order to use them quickly in a variety of ways. Until you save your first command, the Saved commands menu is almost empty and the Manage Saved commands dialog box shows this message:

Saved commands are created when you configure commands and can be retrieved in the drop down list at the bottom of commands dialog box, for example in the Sort dialog box as illustrated above.

You can also launched Saved commands to apply them to the current content of the editor in various ways:

  • from the Saved commands menu (commands are grouped in submenus for each command type);
  • from a local hotkey that can be used when the QCE window is active;
  • from the Manage Saved commands dialog box describe below.

Thanks to QCEmessenger, you can also launched Saved commands from external applications (like Quick Access Popup) or scripts (.bat or Shell scripts, any programming language, etc.) to apply them instantly to the current content of the Clipboard. See Automating Saved commands, below.

Creating Saved commands

To create a Saved command, click the Save command checkbox in any command (as illustrated below in the Sort dialog box):

  • set the Saved command title or click the Suggest button to get a name automatically from the current options selected in the dialog box;
  • enable the Add to menu check box to insert this command in the Saved commands menu;
  • set a Hotkey that will apply the command to the current content of the editor when the QCE window is active;
  • click Save & Execute to save the command as it is executed or Save only to only save the command.
Add Saved commands to a menu and assign hotkeys

The Saved commands menu shows in submenus the saved commands for each type of commands.

Saved commands menu

Managing saved commands

  • Saved commands can be managed globally in the Manage Saved commands dialog box where they can be executed, edited in the appropriate dialog box or deleted.
  • The Saved commands list can be filtered by command types (Insert stringReformat paragraphFind and replace, etc.) and can be filtered by their name in the Filter text box.
  • To apply a command to the current content of the editor, select it in the list and click the Execute button or right-click to open the context menu and select Execute;
  • To open a command in its Edit dialog box, double-click it in the list, select it and click the Edit button or right-click to open the context menu and select Edit;
  • To delete one or multiple commands, check them in the list and click the Delete button.
Manage Saved commands

Managing saved commands

The Manage Saved commands Hotkeys show the list of saved commands with hotkeys. To change or remove the hotkey associated to a saved command, double-click in the list or select it and click the Change button. Select the keyboard or mouse shortcut in the Change shortcut dialog box.

Automating Saved commands

QCE commands can be included in scripts or launched from external applications in order to automate all kinds of Clipboard transformations. This is done using the QCE companion executable QCEmessenger that sends commands to QCE using command line parameters. QCEmessenger can be called from the command line, batch file, any kind of script or application that can use a Run command to launch a Windows application. For example, QCEmessenger can be called from the Quick Access Popup menu by creating an Application favorite having the path to QCEmessenger in its Location text box and the info about the QCE command to run in its Parameters text box.

You will find more info including the QCEmessenger command syntax in the QCEmessenger help page.

Note: QCEmessenger commands can only work on Clipboard text format. When the Clipboard contains various formats (like HTML, RTF, etc.) only the text format is processed and made available in the Clipboard.

Commands menu

You will find under the Commands menu how you can quickly modify the content in the editor.

Sort

Quick sort

  • Select the Sort, Quick sort (alphabetically) menu or hit Ctrl + Q to sort the content alphabetically
  • The sort command is applied to the whole content of the editor or only to the selected text

Sort with options

  • Sort with optionsReverse orderNumeric valuesCase sensitiveCase sensitive considering regional settingsUnique (remove duplicate lines)Randomly, Line length, From last backslash (to sort by filenames), From a given position or From delimiter (specify the delimiter character and its occurrence on each line).
  • Sort again (same options): sort the Editor’s lines with the options defined the last time the Sort with options command was used.
 

Insert string

  • In the Insert string dialog box (Ctrl + I), type the text or the characters to insert at the beginning, at the end or inside each line of the Editor’s content or the selected text.
  • You can click the links tab or new line to Insert these special characters or you can type yourself the backtick sequences `t (tab) or `n to (new line). Use double backticks `` to enter a backtick.
  • Insert text:
    • from the start of each line;
    • at the end of each line;
    • at a specific position;
    • or relative to the beginning or the end of specific characters (w/o an offset).
  • Tip: If you insert text at the end of each line of the selection, make sure you do not select the beginning of the line after the selection if you do not want to change this line (end your selection at the end of the last line).
 

Substring

  • In the Substring dialog box (Ctrl + B), specify if you want to Keep or Remove the selected text.
  • The command is applied to the whole content of the editor or only to the selected text.
  • Indicate the beginning and the end of the text to keep or remove on each line of the editor content
  • Keep or remove the text of each line From:
    • the start of each line
    • a given position
    • or the beginning or the end of a given string (w/o an offset).
  • Keep or remove the text up To:
    • the end of each line;
    • a given number of characters;
    • a given number of characters before the end of the line;
    • or the beginning or the end of a given string (w/o an offset).
 

Filter lines

  • In the Filter lines dialog box, select if you want to Delete or Keep the selected lines.
  • You can filter the lines in the editor based on various condition types.
  • With the Containing option, enter one or more criteria (one per line) and lines will be deleted or kept if:
    • All criteria are found on the line;
    • at least one criteria is found (Any);
    • none of the criteria are found (Not all);
    • any of the criteria is not found (Not any);
    • see the table Criteria “red” and “blue” below for examples.
  • You can also filter lines based on a regular expression.
  • When you choose Delete lines, you can select to remove lines that are Empty or Blank (containing only invisible characters spaces and tabs).
  • When you choose Keep lines, you can choose to retain lines that contain Only Numbers or Only Letters.
  • Check the Case sensitive option to restrict the selection.
 

For example, in the table below, with the criteria red and blue, the following lines will be selected (kept or deleted):

Criteria “red” and “blue”AllAnyNot allNot any
red hat and blue shirtyesyes
green hat and blue shirtyesyes
green hat and red shirtyesyes
yellow hat and green shirtyesyes

Filter characters

  • In the Filter characters dialog box, select if you want to Delete or Keep the selected characters.
  • The characters you enter in the List of characters to delete box will be removed or kept:
    • in all or selected text (Delete in All or Selected text);
    • when you choose Delete characters, you can select the Trim options Beginning and End of lines or only Beginning of lines or only End of lines.
  • Use the various links beside Insert to add invisible characters (tabs or new lines), all numbers or enter special characters based on their ASCII or Unicode number.
  • Check the Case sensitive option to restrict the selection.
 

Reformat paragraph

Use this command to format the text as you need it:

  • reformat the text in lines of a given length with configurable alignment and indentation, keeping paragraph separation;
  • merge all the text on one line.

In both cases, you can also clean up the punctuation following rules you define.

In this example, the following text will be reformatted in lines of a maximum of 79 characters with a tab indentation on the first line of each paragraph.

Lorem  ,ipsum dolor sit amet,   consectetuer adipiscing elit. curabitur dignissim
venenatis pede. quisque dui dui,    ultricies ut, facilisis non, pulvinar non,


    purus:

        duis quis arcu a purus volutpat iaculis. Morbi id dui in diam ornare
dictum.                                     Praesent consectetuer       vehicula ipsum. praesent tortor massa, congue et,ornare  in, posuere eget , pede.

Here is the result:

    Lorem, ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Curabitur
dignissim venenatis pede. Quisque dui dui, ultricies ut, facilisis non,
pulvinar non,

    Purus:

    Duis quis arcu a purus volutpat iaculis. Morbi id dui in diam ornare
dictum. Praesent consectetuer vehicula ipsum. Praesent tortor massa, congue
et, ornare in, posuere eget, pede.

Script

Script allows to group Quick Clipboard Editor (QCE) commands and achieve powerful and efficient editing. A Script can include:

  • Change case commands (upper case, lower case, title case, etc.);
  • Saved commands to insert or remove string on each line, filter characters or lines, reformat paragraphs, etc. (see below);
  • Convert commands (HTML, Base64, etc.).

See the Clipboard Scripting help page for more information.

 

Find/Replace menu

  • You can search and replace the text as with any text editor (only reverse search is not available at this time).

Find, Find next and Find previous

  • Open the Find menu or hit Ctrl + F, enter the text to search and click the Go button (or hit Enter).
  • You can insert invisible characters like tabs or new lines using the links or using the backtick sequences `t (tab) and `n new line. Use double backticks `` to search for a backtick.
  • Select if you want the search with the Match case option.
  • You can search using a Regular expression ans use the Ignore Case if required.
  • The search starts at the current position or at the beginning of selected text.
  • When the found text is highlighted, in the Continue? dialog box, click Yes to search for the next occurrence or No to interrupt the search.
  • If you launch a search with text is selected, the search ends at the end of the selection.
  • If no text is selected, when reaching the end of text, search continues from the beginning of the text until all text has been searched. This looping can changed in Options, Editor Window (see below).
  • After the search action is interrupted, you can use the Find next (F3) and Find previous (Shift + F3) shortcuts to search for more occurrences of the text searched.
 

Find and replace

  • Open the Find and replace menu or hit Ctrl + H, enter the text to search, the replacement text and click the Go button (or hit Enter).
  • You can use the invisible characters links or use the backtick sequences `t and `n to search for or replace with tabs or new lines. Use double backticks `` to enter a backtick.
  • Select if you want the search and replace with the option Match case.
  • You can search and replace using Regular expression and the various regex options checkboxes.
  • The search and replace starts at the current position and stops at the end of the text.
  • When the found text is highlighted, click Yes to replace, No to jump to the next occurrence, All to replace all remaining occurrences of the searched text or Cancel to interrupt the search and replace.
 

Change Case menu

The commands from the Change case menu are applied to the whole content of the editor or only to the selected text.

  • Lower case (Ctrl + Alt + L): all letters converted to lower case.
  • Upper case (Ctrl + Alt + U): all letters converted to capitals.
  • Title case (Ctrl + Alt + T): first letter of each word converted to capital.
  • Sentence case (Ctrl + Alt + S): first letter of each sentence or line converted to capital.
  • Toggle case (Ctrl + Alt + G): also called Reverse case, each letter converted to its opposite case.
  • SaRcAsM case (Ctrl + Alt + A): also called alternating caps.
  • Random (Ctrl + Alt + R): anything can happen.

Convert menu

The Convert menu include commands that change the content of the editor for various programming or technical needs. The first two commands are set using dialog boxes. The remaining commands in the various submenus are applied immediately to the whole content of the editor or only to the selected text. You can always use the Undo command if you do not get the expected result immediately.

 

Convert Number base

This command converts a number in the editor to and from Decimal, Hexadecimal, Octal and Binary bases. If the editor contains more than a number, select the number to convert before opening this command. Make sure the value to convert is selected and is a valid number. Negative numbers are supported but, at this time, number formatting (currency, separators, etc.) is not supported. Only raw numbers can be converted.

 

Convert color codes

This command converts color codes in the editor to and from RGB hexadecimal format (“FF8800”), long integer (“16746496”) and three decimal format (“255,136,0”) with configurable value separator for decimal. All color codes in the selected text are converted. To avoid unintentional long processing time, if no text is selected, the maximum length of text that can be processed is 1,000 characters (this maximum value ConvertColorsMaxSize=1000 can be changed in the ini file under the [Internal] section). If, inadvertently, the selected text includes some (rare) six letter words formed with letters A to F (for example decade, baffed, accede, facade), they could be converted to color codes!

 

Other convert commands

The remaining commands from the Convert menu are applied to the whole content of the editor or only to the selected text.

Note: Do not hesitate to report issue or make suggestions on the QCE forum.

  • URL (URI)
    • Encode for URL (URI) / Decode from URL encoding (URI):
      • encode and decode strings for compatibility with URLs (URI)
      • examples
        • "french/français" ↔ %22french%2Ffran%C3%A7ais%22
        • สวัสดี ↔ %E0%B8%AA%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%AA%E0%B8%94%E0%B8%B5
  • XML
    • Encode for XML / Encode for XML with numeric values / Decode from XML
      • encode and decode strings for compatibility with XML format
      • & ↔ &
      • " ↔ "
      • ' ↔ '
      • < ↔ &lt;
      • > ↔ &gt;
      • example
        • Characters < > & ' and " must be encoded ↔ Characters &lt; &gt; &amp; &apos; and &quot; must be encoded
      • when using Encode for XML with numeric values, the characters you enter in the dialog box will be converted with their numeric values
      • example if you enter bc as characters to replace with numeric values:
        • abcde ↔ a&#98;&#99;de
  • HTML
    • Encode HTML entities and line breaks / Decode from HTML entities and line breaks
      • replace special characters with their HTML entities (like &eacute; for “é” or &amp; for “&”)
      • replace line breaks with “<br>
      • and, on the other way, restore normal characters and line breaks from HTML codes
      • example:
        • Montréal,
          Québec


          Montr&eacute;al,<br>Qu&eacute;bec
  • Hexadecimal
    • Encode Hexadecimal / Decode from Hexadecimal
      • convert text to Hexadecimal format and restore text from Hexadecimal codes
      • example
        • Hello! ↔ 48656C6C6F21
  • ASCII
    • List ASCII codes / Unlist ASCII codes
      • list ASCII codes of editor’s content (or the selected text) and restore original text without ASCII codes
      • example:
        Hello!

        H 72
        e 101
        l 108
        l 108
        o 111
        ! 33
  • PHP
    • Encode for PHP 'single-quoted string' / Decode from PHP 'single-quoted string'
      • escape/unescape characters needing to be escaped for double quoted strings
      • \\ ↔ \
      • \' ↔ '
    • Encode for PHP "double-quoted string" / Decode from PHP "double-quoted string"
      • convert end of line and tab characters and, on the other way, restore normal characters from encoded string
      • escape/unescape characters needing to be escaped for double quoted strings
      • \r\n ↔ CR/LF
      • \t ↔ TAB
      • \\ ↔ \
      • \$ ↔ $
      • \" ↔ "
  • Autohotkey
    • Encode AutoHotkey special characters / Decode from AutoHotkey special characters
      • encode and decode strings for compatibility with AutoHotkey code
      • `n ↔ CR/LF
      • `t ↔ TAB
    • AutoHotkey %var% to Expression / Expression to %var%
      • convert AutoHotkey legacy syntax with variables like %var% to newer expression syntax with variable names and double-quotes
      • Example
        • Hello %YourName%! ↔ "Hello " . YourName . "!"
  • Binary
    • Encode the full Clipboard (all formats) to Base64 text
    • Decode Base64 text in editor and load it to Clipboard
    • Encode image in Clipboard to Base64 text
    • Decode Base64 text in editor and load image to Clipboard
    • Currently Base64 strings are encoded in lines of 64 characters

Options menu

  • The Options dialog box is divided in five sections: LaunchEditor WindowHotkeysClipboard History and Various.
  • In the Launch section, select if you wish Launch at startup to launch QCE at Windows startup, Display Startup Tray TipCheck for update, set settings backup folder and temporary folder.
  • In the Hotkeys section, select the mouse or keyboard hotkeys to:
    • Display the QCE Editor window Mouse button (default Ctrl + Middle Mouse button)
    • Display the QCE Editor window Keyboard shortcut (default Shift + Win + V)
    • Paste from QCE Editor shortcut (default Ctrl + Win + V)
    • Copy text and open the QCE editor (default Ctrl + Win + C)
    • Open the Clipboard History Quick Paste (default Ctrl + `)
    • Open the Clipboard History Quick Paste Text (default Shift + Ctrl + `)
  • In the Editor Window section… (see screen capture above)
    • Select if you wish Open the Editor at Startup, Always search from top,  if you want At the end, continue to search from the top of the text, Remember Editor window position, enable Dark mode support and Show selected character ASCII hexa code in the status bar (instead of default decimal code).
    • In the bottom section, set Startup Default values for options: Fixed font, Font size, Always on top, Use tab in the editor (instead of Ctrl + Tab), Keep the editor open after Paste and Copy to Append to the editor.
    • On the right side, select the Spell checker primary language and a Secondary language (use Shift + F7 to switch between primary and secondary dictionaries).
    • On the right side, set editor’s fixed width font and proportional font, using a color picker set editor’s colors (text and background) for light and dark modes using a color picker and set QCE window background color for light and dark mode; use the header’s links to reset fonts and colors to default settings
  • In the Clipboard History section, configure the History database, History menus and History Search and Quick Paste.
    • Set the maximum size of the database (oldest clips are delete when this size is exceeded); the default is 100 megs – make it larger (like 500 megs) if you plan to often save images to the Clipboard.
    • Set the maximum size of clips saved to the History (larger clips are ignored); the default is 5 megs – make it larger (like 100 megs) if you plan to save large images to the Clipboard.
    • Set the Clipboard sync delay (consecutive Clipboard changes under the specified delay are ignored, default 500 milliseconds).
    • Set how the History menus lists are displayed (width, number of items and icon size).
    • Set how History Search and Quick Paste lists are displayed (font, max number of rows in query results, icons size and remember last window position.
    • Specify if you want to exclude applications from the history database with the History Exclusions/Inclusions list. For example, exclude application that could save confidential information to the Clipboard. If you select Include only, only clips from the listed applications will be saved. Use the Get window info button to identify the applications to exclude or include.
  • In the Various section, set the maximum waiting time when the Clipboard is busy, configure the Number of Saved commands in lists, the codepage used for custom file encoding and the text used for the Copy to append separator command. You can also specify where command dialog boxes will appear: over the center of the editor, on its right or on it left (when the editor window is maximized, dialog boxes are always displayed centered over it).
  • In the Options menu, you can also:
    • Toggle the Keep the editor open after Paste and Copy to Append to the editor.
    • Edit QuickClipboardEditor.ini file to edit other options.
    • Open Settings Folder open the QCE directory where its setting and the history database are saved.

Settings folder and file

Quick Clipboard Editor settings are stored in the file QuickClipboardEditor.ini. Select Options, Edit QuickClipboardEditor.ini to open this file. The settings file database is saved in the QCE Settings folder. You can open this folder from the menu bar under the Options, Open Settings Folder or from the Tray menu.

Optimizing QCE for Your System

When saving Clipboard clips to the database and when pasting text, images or rich text contents to application, Quick Clipboard Editor introduces several execution delays in order to increase its reliability. Saving and pasting clips to applications involve interactions between QCE, AutoHotkey (the QCE runtime engine), Windows and various types of applications. From experience during development, several delays have proven to be essential to ensure the success of the various operations. These delays become more visible when you use the History Search/Quick Paste window to paste multiple clips at once.

These delays are likely longer than necessary. If your high-performance system is responding quickly to QCE commands, you can probably reduce delays durations. On the other hand, on slower systems, you might need to increase the delays. Edit the quickclipboardeditor.ini file to change these delays.

Help menu

  • Get Help (on this page), Visit Quick Clipboard Editor websiteShortcuts HelpMake a donationCheck for update and About Quick Clipboard Editor.
  • The Shortcuts Help show all the hotkeys available when using Quick Clipboard Editor.
 
Quick Clipboard Editor keyboard and mouse hotkeys