Multiple Clipboard Manager

Overview

You can press the quick-paste hotkey (CTRL+ALT+V by default) or click the <Multiple Clipboard Manager> toolbar button to activate the Multiple Clipboard Manager (MCM). MCM maintains a list of clipboards (the list length is 64 in this version). The head of the list is the same as the basic windows clipboard. The rest clipboards represent the clipboard history,  i.e., they record the text that has ever been copied. The clipboard list works like a queue which follows the first-in-first-out (FIFO) rule. MCM also maintains a large clipboard history file which stores thousands of clipboard entries. If you fail to retrieve what you want in the clipboard list, find it in the history file. 

Caret Control Characters

MCM uses a special representation to represent caret control characters. The mapping relationship is given below,

\t    TAB
\r    Carriage Return
\n    Line Feed

This special representation is used to display the beginning text of each entry in the clipboard list. It is also used to specify the separator string which will be automatically inserted between clipboard entries during combined copying and pasting.

Combined Copy and Pasting

If you have selected multiple clipboards, they will be combined before being copied or pasted. The combining order depends on the option <Combine in Reverse Order>.  By default, they are combined in reverse order since the last-copied text is put into the head of the clipboard list. 

Interface Components

<Clipboard List>

The list box located on the left of the dialog. It contains the beginning text of all clipboard entries. Caret control characters are displayed with the representation specified above. The first item is equivalent to the standard windows clipboard. The rest represent the clipboard history starting from the newest one to the oldest one.  Left click in the list box to change selection. Right click or double click an entry to paste its content to the current window. The current window means the window which owns the focus immediately before MCM is activated. 

<Full Text>

The large edit box on the right of MCM. It provides a full view of the content of the selected clipboard. You can edit the  content of each clipboard here.

<Combine In Reverse Order>

This option determines the order by which the selected clipboards are combined before being copied or pasted.

<Separator to add automatically>

If a separator is specified, it will be inserted between the clipboards during combined copying and pasting. Use special caret control characters according to the mapping relationship specified above. For example, you can use '\r\n' to separate the clipboards by a standard Windows line break. 

Buttons located on the bottom of MCM.

<Paste>

Select one or more clipboards first. Click <paste> button to combine and paste the selected clipboards into the current window.  

<Paste All>

Combine and paste the content of all the clipboards.

<Copy>
Combine and copy the content of selected clipboards into the standard windows clipboard. You will see the copied content appear on the top of the clipboard list. If you select only one clipboard, it is equivalent to moving the selected clipboard to the top of clipboard list, i.e., making it the current clipboard.

<Delete>

Delete the selected clipboards. This will actually move the older clipboards up in the list.

<Clear All>

Clear all the clipboards.

<History File>

Open clipboard history file with default text file editor. Clipboard history file is a file named 'cliphis.txt' under the installation directory. In this history file, you can retrieve useful text that was copied a long time ago.