As of Quick Clipboard Editor v1.2 (2023-09-23)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Quick Start

• Download and install here.
• Open the editor with Ctrl + Middle Mouse button or 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 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 QCE Settings Folder where you can edit the Settings file QuickClipboardEditor.ini and find the SQLite database QCE.db.
• Toggle the Suspend Hotkeys.
• Restart Quick Clipboard Editor or Exit Quick Clipboard Editor.

EDITOR WINDOW

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 content of the Clipboard and is ready to be edited.
• You can also copy the selected text in any application and edit it in immediately QCE using the hotkey Ctrl + Win + C.

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 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 (after changing it in the editor, using one of the menu bar commands described below), 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 in any other application updates instantly the content of the editor.
• When the editor is in Editing mode…
  • 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).

Tool Bar

• 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

• Paste: this button first 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.
• 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 or last retrieved History clip).
• Cancel: this button reverts editor content to the current content of the Clipboard (it is enabled under the same conditions as the Copy button).
• 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 when it running (load QAC 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 File, History menu below).

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 of 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.
• The third section shows the ASCII code of the first character selected or, if the Clipboard contains an image, a link to see this image.

MENU BAR

Clipboard

General Microsoft user interface guidelines suggest to name the first item in a menu bar File. But, in the case of QCE, it makes more sense to name it Clipboard since most items in this menu relate to the Clipboard.

• Copy the text in the editor to the Clipboard (Ctrl + S) saves the editor content to the Clipboard and return to the Synced mode.
• Paste the text in the editor 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 application window (this hotkey can be changed in the Options).
• Cancel changes in the editor and revert to the Clipboard restores the current Clipboard content in the editor.
• Close the editor (Esc) closes the QCE window.
• Clipboard History submenu displays the last 25 clips form the Clipboard history . The clip selected in the menu is loaded in the editor.
• Search Clipboard History opens the History Search box (see below).
• Delete history database flushes the content of the Clipboard history.
• Inspect Clipboard to review different formats in the Clipboard and une the two menu items below to copy or get this content (see below).
• File submenu with commands to save or open text files and Clipboard binary backup (see below).
• Open Settings Folder open the QCE directory where its setting and the history database are saved.
• Restart Quick Clipboard Editor resets the editor (in cas something goes wrong).
• Exit Quick Clipboard Editor (Alt + F4) quits the application and stops Clipboard history collect.

History Search box

The History Search gives access to all the clips in your history database. 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 Down/Up arrows to select another clip and press Enter to load it 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 in the last active window, hit the Paste button (3) or open the context menu (2) by right-clicking a clip. This menu allows to Edit or Paste 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.

History Menu Hotkey

• History menu displays the last 25 clips form the Clipboard history . The clip selected in the menu is loaded in the editor.
  • The History menu can also be open over any window with the hotkey Ctrl + Win + H.
  • When the editor is the active window, the selected clip in the Clipboard History menu is loaded to the editor; when another window is active window, the selected history clip is pasted to the active window.
  • The hotkey can be change in Options, Hotkeys.

Clipboard formats

Inspect Clipboard

The Inspect Clipboard dialog box shows the various formats available for the content copied to the Clipboard. Applications storing data to the Clipboard can do it 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. 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

The Copy the text in the editor to Clipboard As Format allow to copy the text or source code in the Editor to the Clipboard in various 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.
• For the two … As Files commands, files must exist in order to be copied or cut.

Get the text or source code for Clipboard Format

The Get the text or source code for Clipboard Format allows to load in the editor the Clipboard content in various formats:

• 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).

File operations

• 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.
• 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).

Edit

• You can also open the Edit menu in the editor 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.
• The Insert String and SubString, Manage Saved commands are described below.

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.

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), set the beginning and the end of the text to keep or remove on each line of the Editor’s content

• The command is applied to the whole content of the editor or only to the selected text.
• 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).
• Click the Keep button to retain the specified text or Remove to delete the selected text from each line of the editor (or the selected lines).

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).

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

Criteria “red” and “blue”	All	Any	Not all	Not any
red hat and blue shirt	yes	yes
green hat and blue shirt		yes	yes
green hat and red shirt		yes	yes
yellow hat and green shirt			yes	yes

• You can also filter lines based on a regular expression.
• Check the Case sensitive option to restrict the selection.
• When you choose Delete lines, you remove lines that are Empty or Blank (containing only invisible characters spaces and tabs).
• When you select Keep lines, you can choose to retain lines that contain Only Numbers or Only Letters.

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 select Delete characters with the Trim… options, at the beginning of lines (all lines or only selected lines), end of lines or both.
• 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.

Find/Replace

• 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 enter a backtick.
• Select if you want the search with the Match case option or using a Regular expression.
• The search starts at the current position and stops at the end of the text or at the end of the selection.
• 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.
• After the search action is interrupted, you can use the Find next (F3) and Find previous (Shift + F3) shortcuts to search for other 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 or using Regular expression.
• 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.

Sort

Quick sort

• Select the Sort, Quick sort (alphabetically) menu of 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 options: Reverse order, Numeric values, Case sensitive, Case sensitive considering regional settings, From a given position, From last backslash, Unique (remove duplicate lines), Randomly or by Line length.
• Sort again (same options): sort the Editor’s lines with the options defined the last time the Sort with options command was used.

Change Case

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 Alterning caps.

Convert

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

Note: These conversion commands may need some “real life” improvements. 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
    • & ↔ &
    • " ↔ "
    • ' ↔ '
    • < ↔ <
    • > ↔ >
    • example
      • Characters < > & ' and " must be encoded ↔ Characters < > & ' and " 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 ↔ abcde
• HTML
  • Encode HTML entities and line breaks / Decode from HTML entities and line breaks
    • replace special characters with their HTML entities (like é for “é” or & 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 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
    • \\ ↔ \
    • \$ ↔ $
    • \" ↔ "
  • Encode for PHP single-quoted string / Decode from PHP single-quoted string
    • escape/unescape characters needing to be escaped for double quoted strings
    • \\ ↔ \
    • \' ↔ '
• Autohotkey
  • Encode AutoHotkey special characters / Decode from AutoHotkey special characters
    • encode and decode strings for compatibility with AutoHotkey code
    • `r`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 variuable names and “…”
    • Example
      • Hello %YourName%! ↔ "Hello " . YourName . "!"
• Binary
  • Encode full Clipboard 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

• The Options dialog box is divided in five sections: Launch, Editor Window, Hotkeys, Clipboard History and Various.
• In the Launch section, select if you wish Launch at startup to launch QCE at Windows startup, Display Startup Tray Tip, Check for update, set settings backup folder and temporary folder.
• In the Editor Window, select if you wish Open the Editor at Startup, Remember Editor window position, enable Dark mode support, Use tab in the editor (instead of Ctrl + Tab) and set default values for options that can be changed in the editor toolbar or in the Options menu.

• In the Hotkeys section, select the mouse or keyboard hotkeys to:
  • Display the QCE Editor window (mouse)
  • Display the QCE Editor window (keyboard)
  • Paste the editor content to the last active window
  • Copy the selected text and open the QCE editor
  • Display the Clipboard History Menu

• In the Clipboard History section, enable Clipboard History and configure the database, menu and history search.
• In the Various section, 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.
• Edit QuickClipboardEditor.ini file to edit other options (see below).

Settings file

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

Help

• Get Help (on this page), Visit Quick Clipboard Editor website, Shortcuts Help, Make a donation, Check for update and About Quick Clipboard Editor.

• The Shortcuts Help show all the hotkeys available when using Quick Clipboard Editor.

SAVING COMMANDS

• For commands that you want to use frequently, you can save the commands by checking the Save command checkbox.
• A name for your saved command is suggested and you can edit it.

• The saved commands names are used to retrieve the saved command from the Saved commands dropdown list.

Retrieving and Managing saved commands

• Commands of all types can be saved and retrieved.
• Saved commands can be managed globally in the Manage Saved commands dialog box where they can be deleted or loaded to the appropriate dialog box.