March 15, 2014
How to Retrieve Clipboard History in Windows
Ever
copied a code snippet or text from the web and forgot to paste it
before you copied something else? So, wondering to know how to retrieve clipboard history?
Well, all of us will have an experience
of something like this where we want to desperately retrieve those
information that was once copied to the clipboard. But since Windows
clipboard will only remember the last item that was copied onto it, it
would seem impossible to recover the information that was copied
earlier. However, this problem can be solved using any of the following
alternative clipboard managers in place of the default one.
In this post you will find a few such
alternative clipboard managers for Windows using which it would be
possible to save and retrieve every piece of information that was copied
to the clipboard. Here’s a quick list:
1. Clipdiary
This tool is a powerful clipboard
manager which will store every piece of information that was copied to
the clipboard including text, images or any other file. Clipdiary
automatically loads upon Windows startup and maintains a database to
store the history of all copied items.
This makes it possible to retrieve the
information that was once copied to the clipboard, be it the last hour
or the last week. Clipdiary is a shareware tool which comes with a 30 day fully functional evaluation period.
2. ClipMagic
ClipMagic is similar to Clipdiary but
includes a few extra features that could seem handy for advanced users.
The following are some of the extra features of ClipMagic that are not
present in Clipdiary:
- Categorize/organize your clips. You can also create filters/rules for your incoming clips
- You can store/categorize your ideas to research fast
- Assign often used text like email signatures to hotkeys
3. Ditto
Ditto is a powerful alternative to the default Windows clipboard manager which is an open source
tool. It keeps track of all the copied items such as text, images and
other files so that you can retrieve them whenever necessary. The
following are some of the highlights of Ditto:
- Assign hotkeys to frequently used clippings
- Search and organize the clippings based on task or project
- Supports unicode so that you can copy foreign and non-standard characters without any issues
- Get a preview of all the copied items including thumbnails of images just by pressing the assigned hotkey
- Ditto comes as a freeware so that you can enjoy all of its features free of cost
Even though Ditto is a freeware, it is
still comparable to the two shareware tools discussed earlier. So in my
opinion Ditto is always the first choice. You may still download and try
all the three and keep the one that you like!
