Select Clip Collection from the View menu to open EditPad Pro’s Clip Collection panel. There you can store common blocks of text and templates for quick repeated reuse. When editing complex documents, move chunks of text into the collection for temporary storage. The Clip Collection is also a great place to jot down notes and ideas, and to keep important information at your fingertips.
AceText, a product available separately, is specifically designed to enable you to very flexibly work with large numbers of text snippets. If you have installed AceText, EditPad Pro will use AceText’s Clip Collection functionality, and display the collection that is active in AceText. EditPad Pro and AceText will automatically keep the collection synchronized when you edit it in AceText or EditPad Pro.
If you do not have AceText, EditPad Pro will manage the collection of clips by itself. You may want to check out the free evaluation version of AceText. AceText offers a lot of extra functionality. Most importantly, AceText enables you to use your clip collections in combination with applications other than EditPad Pro. AceText cooperates with almost all Windows software.
To add text to the collection, simply select it in the editor and click the “New Clip” button in the toolbar above the Clip Collection. You can also drag and drop the selection from the editor into the collection. Drag and drop clips inside the collection to rearrange them.
You can edit a clip’s label or view and edit the text it holds by clicking the Edit Clip button. If you use AceText, this will activate the AceText Editor. If not, you can edit the clip directly in EditPad Pro.
If you want to add many clips to a collection, organize them in a folder to make it easier to find the right clip later. Simply click the New Folder button to create a new folder. Add clips to the folder by selecting the folder before clicking the New Clip button. You can also drag and drop text or clips onto the folder.
To insert the contents of a clip into the file you are editing, simply double-click it or drag-and-drop it onto the spot where you want to insert it. If the clip holds before and after text, it will be placed around the text you selected in the editor. If you did not select any text, the before and after texts are inserted right next to each other, and the text cursor is placed between them. Before and after text makes it very easy to insert common text blocks that have an opening and closing part, such as HTML or XML tags.
If you are not using AceText, EditPad Pro will automatically save Clip Collections. This way, you never have to worry about losing any clips. The Save button allows you to save the collection under a different name. To open a collection later, click the Open button and select the file, or click the downward pointing arrow next to the Open button to select a collection you recently worked with.
To make Clip Collections even more transparent, you can assign a default collection to each file type in the file type configuration. That collection is then automatically opened whenever you switch to a file of that type. E.g. you can assign a collection with HTML tags to the HTML file type. That way, the clip collection will always be ready for inserting HTML tags whenever you edit an HTML file.
EditPad Pro can also import TextPad Collection Library files (*.tcl files). After clicking the Open button on the Clip Collection panel’s toolbar, select the “TextPad Collection Libraries” file type in the drop-down list at the bottom of the file selection screen. EditPad Pro cannot save TextPad Collection Library files.
Click the Share Collections button to download Clip Collections shared by others, or to upload your own collections. A new window will pop up. EditPad Pro will connect to the Internet immediately to download the list of available collections. If your computer can only access the internet via a proxy server, click the Settings button in the lower left corner of the screen to enter your proxy server’s settings.
The Download tab shows all available collections, including the ones you uploaded. The list shows the collection’s title, the file name used by the author, how many clips it contains, who shared it, when it was first shared and when it was last updated. Click on a collection to get a more detailed description, and the author’s name and email address (if provided by the author). Click the Download button to download the selected scheme.
The Share tab shows the collections that you previously uploaded. EditPad Pro automatically uses your EditPad Pro license to identify you. You can check your license details in the about box. To share a collection, select its file, and enter a title and your name. You can also enter your email address and web site URL if you want. In the Description box, explain what your collection is about. Click the Upload button to upload it. If you select a collection you previously uploaded, EditPad Pro will fill out all the fields with what you entered when you uploaded that collection. This way you can easily update a previously shared collection, or use the same details for another one. If you upload a collection with the same file name as a collection you already shared, the newly uploaded collection will replace the old one. If you upload a collection with another file name, it will be added as a new collection, even if you give it the same title or description as another one. Click the Delete button to stop sharing a collection.
EditPad Pro downloads and uploads in the background. The Progress tab shows all collections in the queue, and recently completed transfers. If an error occurs, EditPad Pro will not pop up a message box. The Progress tab will indicate the error.