Make Concordances from Clipboard

Make Concordances from Clipboard

You can make an instant concordance of any documents you have open in other Windows programs, such as Word, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Acrobat Reader, Access, Excel, WordPad, Notepad, some SGML viewers, and many other programs - in fact, any program which knows how to place text on the Windows Clipboard. You do not have to worry about converting from different file formats: that is done automatically. You can also accumulate text from any number of different Windows programs before you make your concordance.

First select the text you want in the other Windows program. (Remember that in many Windows programs pressing Control-A is a quick way to select all text.) Now copy it to the Clipboard (Control-C usually does this). Now, on Concordance's File menu, choose either Make Full Concordance or Make Selective Concordance. Then choose From Clipboard. If there is no text currently on the Windows Clipboard, the option will be greyed out (not available).

When you choose From Clipboard, the Make Concordance from Clipboard dialog opens. You will see all the text which Concordance has captured from the Clipboard. You can copy further text from other programs and it will all be captured. Unlike the Windows Clipboard, Concordance's Clipboard Capture can hold more than one clip at a time.

When you are ready, press the Make Selective Concordance or Make Full Concordance button.

If your text is already saved in a plain text file, you can make a concordance from files instead of from the Clipboard.

Clipboard Capture

Concordance's Clipboard Capture window is actually a full text editor, so you can alter captured text before making a concordance. The editor can find and replace, undo, and save text to a file. (You don't need to save text just to make a concordance. The ability to do so makes Concordance a general-purpose tool for working with text on the Windows Clipboard. You can gather text from numerous different programs and save it.)

Clipboard Control

Clipboard Control lets you tell Concordance to stop watching the Clipboard (so text you copy while in other programs will not be captured). It also lets you choose whether new clips will be added to what is already captured or will overwrite it.

Clipboard Control: Clip References

When you make a concordance to more than one clip, you can choose to have Concordance automatically add references to show which clip a word came from. References will be in the form Clip1, Clip2, etc. To make this happen, tick Add for each clip.

You can if you wish add further references manually. For more information, see 'Combining Filename References with normal References' in Make Concordances from Files.

If you specify a reference letter here, it will be added to the set of references to collect in the References dialog. If you don't, it will be set to F (which suggests File) and will again be added to the set of references to collect.

Concordance Control: Stop List and Pick List

If you are making a Full Concordance, you can edit the Stop List by pressing Edit Stop List, and choose whether to use the Stop List for any concordance by ticking or unticking Use Stop List.

If you are making a Selective Concordance, you can edit the Pick List by pressing Edit Pick List.

About Files from the Clipboard

Concordance automatically saves text from the Clipboard Capture into a file before it makes your concordance. As text from the Windows Clipboard does not have a filename of its own, Concordance creates one for you. The first time you make a concordance from the Clipboard, the file will be called TextFromClipboard-File1.Txt, and the corresponding concordance file will be TextFromClipboard-File1.Txt.Concordance. You can use Rename on the File menu to change these names later if you like.

Using the Preferences dialog on the Tools menu, you can control where these files are created.