ClipX fix

Summary: ClipX is good for you, but it has a little problem, which is easy to fix... if you know how.

ClipX is one of the most useful utilities running on my system. It fills the gap left by the native Windows clipboard which restricts the number of saved elements to a single entry. ClipX is a clipboard manager, which holds entries from your clipboard history so that you can easily copy them between applications. I'm using ClipX now, as I write this post, to define titles and target of the hyperlinks.


Before ClipX, I used a similar utility called CLCL. CLCL used the ALT+C combination as the default keyboard shortcut (hotkey) for displaying the clipboard history. I liked this shortcut because it's somewhat similar to the unforgettable CTRL+C and because it's easy to press by one hand. By default, ClipX uses a different hotkey for displaying the history, but you can change it using the Configuration dialog box. Unfortunately, the Configuration dialog box does not let you change the hotkey to ALT+C, because this is the hotkey used by the dialog box itself; it's mapped to the Cancel button, so once you press ALT+C, the dialog box closes ignoring the changes. Fortunately, I was able to find a workaround.

To set, the hotkey to ALT+C, do the following:

1. If ClipX is running, stop it.


2. Using a text editor (such as Notepad), open the clipx.ini file located in the ClipX program file directory (by default, it must be under C:\Program Files\ClipX).


3. Locate the lines holding the hotkey1_key and hotkey1_mod settings under your user name section and set them to the following:

   hotkey1_key=67
   hotkey1_mod=1

4. Save and close clipx.ini.


5. Start ClipX.

Now, if you open the Configuration dialog box, you will see that the Primary Paste hotkey is set to CTRL+C. And it actually works.

Vista Warning

If you attempt to save the modified clipx.ini file on Windows Vista, you may get this error: Cannot create the C:\Program Files\ClipX\clipx.ini file. Make sure that the path and file name are correct. To overcome this, run Notepad as administrator (right-click the Notepad shortcut, and select the Run as administrator option from the context menu; once Notepad starts, open clipx.ini make the change and save the modified file).

P.S. I hope that ClipX creators will fix this problem, so that this post will no longer be needed. They just need to disassociate hotkeys from the controls -- text fields, buttons -- in the Hotkeys tab of the Configuration dialog box from the buttons.