ClipCleaner

ClipCleaner is a tiny utility program I wrote that "cleans" the contents of the clipboard by converting it to plain text. Of course this is only applicable to text-based contents, it would be useless to try and "clean" an image or other binary object on the clipboard.

When the program is run, it remains in memory with a small icon on the toolbar. After copying text to be cleaned, press Win + c (Win is the Windows key) and the clipboard contents will be converted to text. Alternately you can "clean and paste" in one action by pressing Win + v (thanks to Martin O'Neill for the improvement idea). This is really a very small script: one AutoHotKey command does all of the work. The rest of the file consists of comment lines and tray settings.

My primary uses for this are

1. It is faster than using Paste Special in Microsoft Office applications when I am trying to paste only text.
2. If you need a list of filenames from an Explorer window, select the files and copy them to the clipboard. The file names are not available as ASCII text at this point, they are in a special format so that Windows can link to the files when you paste the names. But now if you WANT only the names, pressing Win+C will "clean" them up and convert them into their text equivalents (with full path names).

   Comments and suggestions are welcome!

   ClipCleaner.ahk		AutoHotKey Script
   Readme.txt	(this file)
   ClipCleaner.zip		The above files together in a .zip archive

   DaTex

   Change Log

   Version 1.1 (Current Version, 9 September 2009)

   • Clean and paste in one step by pressing Win+V

   Version 1.0 (8 September 2009)

   • Cleans text on clipboard with Win+C.
   • Menu tray icon set to Shell32.dll number 145 (a checkmark on a file)
   • Set the menu tray tooltip to remind the user what key activates it