[Macworld]

Post your comments for Quickly copy text clippings and .webloc files here

[henrycalwell]

Nice! I love little tricks like this... although, wouldn't it just be simpler to copy the URL or text snippet at the source? I mean, one click in Chrome's address bar (I think a double-click in Safari) highlights the whole URL. Then Command+C from there. Regarding the text... well, you've already highlighted it to drag it into Spotlight... so wouldn't you just copy it at that point?

Anyway, along the same lines, check this out: A quick and simple way to get a file's full path:
http://pennywised.co...es-path-quickly

[Bengt77]

Hey, this is extremely useful! Thank you, Macworld and llee!

[dgoddard]

With 10.6, I can just drag the clipping into a TextEdit window, or the TextEdit icon in my dock. Seems much easier.

[gherrick]

I have devised a procedure to harvest URLs & clipping quickly. I set up Expose [thanks to someone's suggestion in some forum] so I can drag the clipping to a corner and Expose temporarily exposes the desktop, on which I have placed near that corner a folder [actually and alias to a folder], "clippings to file," on to which I drag the clipping for later filing and use.

[TeaEarleGreyHot]

Sometimes my clippings get converted to .rtf documents. Not sure why. And that makes them difficult to drop into other documents. How can I prevent that?

(History: I keep a folder of clippings of commonly used phrases and FAQ answers, as I double as a help-desk sort of person for another site, and tire of re-typing everything. Prefer just to drag answers over. But when they become .rtf docs, it doesn't work!)

[rocketmouse]

gherrick, on 07 June 2011 - 08:11 AM, said:

I have devised a procedure to harvest URLs & clipping quickly. I set up Expose [thanks to someone's suggestion in some forum] so I can drag the clipping to a corner and Expose temporarily exposes the desktop, on which I have placed near that corner a folder [actually and alias to a folder], "clippings to file," on to which I drag the clipping for later filing and use.

Oh. Thanks for posting. Seems simpler than using Jumpcut even, with a "NewTxtDoc.txt" on the desktop. I already have Expose set up appropriately so it should be a breeze to implement. Putting aliases to my "filing folders" (only 2) on the desktop should make the process even more direct.

[whitedog]

This trick doesn't work for me with .webloc files. I don't get the plus cursor when I hover the file over the Spotlight search field. However, if I drop the file in a TextEdit document window, I get a nicely formatted link, underlined and ready to click. So, though this hint doesn't work, for whatever reason, on my Mac (OS X 10.6.7), it led me to experiment and figure out an acceptable alternative - which bypasses the clipboard entirely.

[ZombieReagan]

What a crazy, weirdo hack. Surprising it works at all.

Better yet just use the free ClipEdit app to copy and edit your text clippings and images.

www.everydaysoftware.net/clipedit/index.html

[kamx3]

For URL's I have a folder in documents "Saved Web Pages" with an icon in my dock (which is on the right side of the screen). To save a URL as a .webloc I simply grab the icon on the left end of the url entry window (they have a name, but it escapes me) and drag it to the dock icon of my Saved Web Pages folder. I could create a similar folder for clippings, but I seldom use them.

[bastion]

henrycalwell, on 07 June 2011 - 04:54 AM, said:

Nice! I love little tricks like this... although, wouldn't it just be simpler to copy the URL or text snippet at the source? I mean, one click in Chrome's address bar (I think a double-click in Safari) highlights the whole URL. Then Command+C from there. Regarding the text... well, you've already highlighted it to drag it into Spotlight... so wouldn't you just copy it at that point?

It's not talking about text. It's talking about a text clipping.

Then again, I'm not really sure of the value of getting the contents of a clipping onto the clipboard. The whole point of them is that you should be able to drag the clipping file itself into any context that allows text entry and its contents will be inserted there.

[bastion]

TeaEarleGreyHot, on 07 June 2011 - 08:28 AM, said:

Sometimes my clippings get converted to .rtf documents. Not sure why. And that makes them difficult to drop into other documents. How can I prevent that?

Figure out what process is doing that and disable it. This is not something the OS just does, and it's not even some kind of trivial one-step task you could reasonable do by accident. RTF is marked up text in the data fork of a file. Text clippings store their content in the resource fork.

[lientotail]

I click dragged files out of a dropbox folder and now they are webloc files. I cannot open them now and am very frustrated. Please help. I've downloaded webloc2url. It worked and then it stopped opening anything.