Have you ever copied something to the clipboard, and then copied something else before you pasted? Or opened up Notepad just to hold some text while you copied something else? If yes to either (and I've done both), Outertech's free Clipboard History is likely to be a useful tool.

Clipboard History has one simple, straightforward, function. It stores the last few (the default is ten, but you can set it higher or lower) items you copied to the clipboard, along with specified permanent items. For example, you may want have your name and address "stickied," if you type those often. Access to the history is via the caps lock key by default, which gives that key a purpose besides helping you post strong and logically irrefutable arguments as to why fluoridation of drinking water is done to make us taste better to the aliens at Roswell. Of course, the history key can be changed from the default.

As with Linkman Lite, another product by Outertech, Clipboard Manager integrates so smoothly with your general work flow that it soon becomes almost transparent. This is the mark of an excellent utility.

Clipboard Manager is not entirely without flaws. First, when dealing with information in multiple formats (such as parts of a Word document that have different styles), while it shows you different paste possibilities and allows you to pick one, it acts very oddly when pasting more than once, sometimes removing the "multiformat" entry from the history list. Secondly, when I copied several sections of an image in succession, only the last image copied remained in the history.

It's a rare 1.0 release that is bug-free, however. Given an awareness that it's not quite perfect, and considering that it's a fully-functional free program, not a trial or demo, I strongly recommend it.

--Ian Harac