Product Reviews

If you waste time switching between applications, copying one item at a time, CopyPaste X could be the tool for you. It provides you with two palettes - the Clipboard Recorder and Clipboard Extender. The former remembers the previous 20 items copied or cut via the Mac's standard keyboard commands, although this figure can be increased to 200. Items can be pasted from the Clipboard Recorder either by drag and drop, by clicking the blue P next to the relevant item, or via CopyPaste X's Dock menu.

The Clipboard Extender is even better. By using command-c and a number from 0-9, or the C icons on the palette itself, items are stored in the relevant clipboard space. You can also drag files, such as text documents and images, directly onto the palette to store them. You can save Clip Sets, effectively providing a method of storing unlimited commonly used

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snippets of information, which can then be accessed on a system-wide basis.

CopyPaste X's palettes float above other applications, allowing you to immediately see what's stored. Images are denoted by the word 'picture', although floating previews appear when the mouse cursor is placed over the relevant space. Should these palettes get in the way, they can be minimised to a single icon, or closed entirely whereupon you can use the application's Dock menu instead.

CopyPaste X also contains an excellent Clipboard Editor, where you can edit any text file, changing its content and styling to suit. In addition to editing tools for typographical elements, CopyPaste X contains powerful tools for working with the content itself. Along with converting selections between different cases, you can number paragraphs, create and sort words lists, insert dates, and strip email addresses and URLs from documents. Finally, the Text Cleaner removes linefeeds and HTML tags and reformats the lot as paragraphs of soft-wrapped text.

Further functions include a Clip Archive that can copy every piece of text you copy to a file on your hard drive; a Clip Revolver for pasting several clips in order, and the ability to save clipboards when shutting down or restarting your Mac.

Our only minor gripe with CopyPaste X is that the interface is a little clumsy in places. It's worth persevering, though, as the program rapidly becomes indispensable.