Create Clip from Text File

The Create Clip from Text File button is available on the collection toolbar when the ClipHistory tab or an AceText Collection tab is active.

Click the Create Clip from Text File button or press Shift+Ctrl+O on the keyboard to select one or more files. Each file you select is added as a new clip to the active collection. The names of the files are used as labels for the clips. Their full paths are used as URLs for the clips. The date on the clip is set to the file’s last modification date. The full path is also matched against the masks that you can customize in the Syntax Preferences to automatically select a syntax coloring scheme for the clip.

The contents of the file are stored into the AceText collection. Though the clip’s URL remembers which file the clip was created from, this does not represent an active link to the file. Editing or overwriting the file does not automatically update the clip in AceText. Editing a clip created from a file in AceText does not update that file.

AceText can only read plain text files, such as text documents (.txt), HTML files (.html), XML data (.xml), software source code, etc. AceText automatically detects Unicode files, with or without a Unicode signature (BOM). Unicode files are loaded as plain text clips. If a file does not look like it’s a Unicode file then AceText checks whether the file contains NULL bytes. If it does then AceText loads the file as binary data. All other files are loaded as text files using your computer’s default non-Unicode encoding.

AceText cannot decode proprietary file formats, such as Microsoft Word documents (.doc), Excel spreadsheets (*.xls) or Adobe PDF files (*.pdf). It loads them as binary data. To transfer text from such files into AceText, open the file in its corresponding application. Then use copy and paste or drag and drop between that application and AceText. The software then decodes its own proprietary file format and offers the contents as plain text to AceText.

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