Tech Tips for Writers #175: Windows has a clipboard stream!

Tech Tips for Writers is an occasional post on overcoming Tech Dread. I’ll cover issues that friends, both real-time and virtual, have shared. Feel free to post a comment about a question you have. I’ll cover it in a future tip.

I can’t believe it took me so long to find this particular gem: Windows has a native clipboard (I see some of you rolling your eyes, like of course you know this. Bear with me). MS Office has one that tracks multiple clips, but the one in Windows–I thought–tracked only one. Not true. It tracks as many as MS Office.

Why is this so exciting to me? As I read blogs or articles, I like to copy the parts that I am inspired to comment on, or copy a quote that requires attribution. I created tedious workarounds, but they are … tedious… This Windows clipboard holds twenty-ish bits. Look at the scrollbar in this image (where the orange arrow points).

That’s a big list.

Here’s how you access it:

• Click the Windows Key and then the letter V to open the clipboard.
• If you don’t have it activated, the shortkey will ask you to activate it.
• Click the clip you want to insert. It will appear where your cursor is blinking.
• If you have a clip you’d like to save–a template for a query letter or your signature line for blogs (like mine below)–there are three dots on the right side of the clip. Click those and you’ll find the option to ‘pin’.

One handy characteristic: These are saved across all of your Windows devices.

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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular prehistoric fiction saga, Man vs. Nature which explores seminal events in man’s evolution one trilogy at a time. She is also the author of the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers and Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. Her non-fiction includes over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, reviews as an Amazon Vine Voice, and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. Look for her next prehistoric fiction, Natural Selection, Spring 2022.

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