A Wonderfully Simple, Free, Powerful Clipboard Manager

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I've never really used a clipboard manager before.  I've never quite seen the point of them.  The Windows clipboard is a temporary storage place for a single item, and if you save something else to the clipboard then the existing item gets overwritten.  Simple.

Then I discovered a rather neat utility called Ditto, which might just make me change my mind about the whole category of software.

Ditto is a clipboard manager which works.  It's easy to use, flexible, not terribly complicated, and does something that's actually quite useful after all.

Once you've installed the software, carry on using your PC as normal.  Copy stuff to the clipboard as before, and paste it if you wish.  Or, instead of using the normal paste function, click on the Ditto icon in the system tray and you can see all of the previous stuff you've ever copied to the clipboard. To paste any of the entries into the current application just takes a couple of clicks.

Ditto is free (although the author does ask for a donation if you find it useful).  You can get it from http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/ and it works on everything from Windows XP to 8.  Choose from 32- or 64-bit versions, including portable ones.  The portable version is definitely the best option if you want to try out the program as there's nothing to install - just unzip the downloaded and run the .exe file.  

Ditto is a 4 MB download, gets a green light from Web of Trust and is malware-free according to VirusTotal.

 

See Also: Ditto - The Editor's Choice in Best Free Clipboard Replacement Utility

 

 

 

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Comments

Use to use Yankee Clipper because it did everything I needed with managing both text and images when clipped. Switched to Ditto because it does just about everything without the complexity. Simply install it and forget it.

Hi !

I've been using ClipX for years, and I've been very happy with it.
http://bluemars.org/clipx/

If I can remember, I tried Ditto and a few others, but for some reason I preferred ClipX.

It's especially great if you copy or cut some text and open a MS Office program to paste the text into. Microsoft arrogantly clears the clipboard upon opening. This utility allows you to get it back. One improvement might be to put the contents back into the clipboard upon opening the Office document.

I agree with "oblivion" that Clipboard Help and Spell is the best! I explored a very large number of clipboard utilities and was amazed at the capabilities of Clipboard Help and Spell.

It's available at:

http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/clipboardhelpandspell/index...

You can:

Configure the number of previous clips to see in the pop-up menu

See a much larger listing of all of the clips used recently

Capture both words and images for pasting

Delete any clip copied (great for passwords)

Set up a set of favorites for re-pasting

and much, much more.

It is by far the most powerful clipboard manager I've ever encountered, and surprisingly easy to use, too.

I used to use ArsClip -- which IS excellent (and the name is from ArsTechnica) but for some reason I ran into issues with it and my workflow a few years back and started looking for alternatives. The one that won my personal battle and became my clipboard manager of choice is Clipboard Help and Spell (from DonationCoder, at http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/clipboardhelpandspell/index... ) It lets me sort various categories of stored clips into subsets and supports images too.

Been using Ditto for years. Does the job and for free.

The perhaps unfortunately named Arsclip is well worth a look in this category of app.

http://www.joejoesoft.com/vcms/97/

I've been using Ditto for ages myself, but Arsclip is indeed quite good too. :) Ditto uses less RAM (14MB 42MB... Every MB counts if you want performance!), but Arsclip is much more user-friendly in config and usage (human-readable and well-structured config, easier image handling)... I'm gonna try Arsclip for a while now! Edit: after another investigation into Ditto, I'd say Ditto wins again. :) You just gotta figure out the names of the types (CF_DIB and such is not very informative) and disable/ignore the tons of features you don't use (network sharing and such). The killer feature that made me go back was search-as-you-type, which Arsclip doesn't have.

Also mentioned in the list of Best Free Clipboard Replacement Utility (http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-clipboard-replacement-utility.htm) and definitely a good AND actively developed program (which can't be said from Ditto; but maybe Ditto is so good that it does need little improvement)

PS. I use Ditto on my work PC and ArsClip at home. And I'm happy with both of them

Does not seem to handle metafiles.

Thanks rob!

In the past, using windows 95/98 I used a clipboard manager.
Very useful but it was not updated for newer OS.

I am going to dowload portable version because I'am trying to limit my installed applicatios.

Peter

I have been using Ditto for many months before now. I do not understand the problems others are having. I use Win 7 home version and it works fine and I now could not bear to be without it now. I mark a URL link, Control C and it's there for when I need it 30 minutes later.

I cannot tell it's loaded until I want something and it's there for me. Get it.

I really like Ditto, but it loses focus too many times which interrupts my workflow.

Yes, I'd endorse the portable version too. At first I had the installed version, but it was buggy. Hovering over its system tray icon was like molasses sometimes. Ever since I switched to the portable version it's been fine.