Auto Split

The Auto Split button is available on the collection toolbar when the ClipHistory tab is active.

When AceText captures text into the ClipHistory because Automatic Capture is active or because you press the hotkey to capture text on the clipboard into the ClipHistory, Auto Split automatically splits that text into multiple clips along your chosen delimiter. This way you can easily paste separate items from a list that was copied by another application.

If AceText has already captured the clip you want to split then you can use the Split Clips command to split it afterwards.

When you click the Auto Split button, you will be asked which characters along which you want to split the copied text. You can select one of the common delimiters, or type in whatever text you want to use as a delimiter. If you copy some text that does not contain the delimiter, it is added as a single clip.

Click the downward pointing arrow next to the Auto Split button to quickly turn on Auto Split using one of the common delimiters. The drop-down menu also has an option labeled "Reverse Split Clips". This reverses the order of the split clips in the ClipHistory. The clips are still added to the top or bottom of the ClipHistory as chosen in the Operation Preferences.

When Auto Split is enabled, clicking the Auto Split button disables it. To change the delimiter while Auto Split is on, either turn off Auto Split and turn it on again, or click the downward pointing arrow to access the Auto Split drop-down menu to pick another delimiter.

To split more complicated clips, you can use a regular expression. AceText can apply the regular expression in two ways. If you select the “split” option, AceText deletes each regular expression match. The bits of text between two matches (as well as the bits before the first and after the last match) are captured into the ClipHistory. Splitting along the regular expression [;,], for example, treats both semicolons and commas as delimiters.

If you select the regular expression “match” option, AceText finds all regex matches in the captured text and stores each match into a new clip. Parts of the captured text not matched by the regular expression are discarded. If the regex does not match the captured text at all, nothing is added to the ClipHistory. Splitting a clip matching the regular expression \w+, for example, extracts all the words from the clip, putting each word into a new clip. Punctuation and whitespace are discarded.

If the hotkey to capture text on the clipboard into the ClipHistory is disabled then activating Auto Split automatically activates Automatic Capture too. Otherwise, Auto Split would have no effect. Turning off Automatic Capture then also automatically turns off Auto Split. If the hotkey is enabled then you can turn Auto Split and Automatic Capture on or off independently as Auto Split can also work with the hotkey.

Activating Auto Split automatically cancels Auto Append.

See Capture, Enter and Store Text to learn how to use AceText.