30Jun/09Off
Keep notepad handy to clear formatting
As a tester, I suspect you do a lot of copy and paste. Sometimes it's test data from a file into an application. Sometimes it's from a screen into a defect report. And sometimes it's from one application into another. Many times, it can be nice to remove formatting before you paste.
I keep Notepad (or TextEdit on my Mac) open all the time so I can quickly paste and re-copy to/from Notepad before I paste it into the target application. This automatically removes all simple formatting (bold, italics, fonts, etc...) and makes it much easier to clean up spacing formatting (tabs, spaces, etc...).
June 30th, 2009 - 05:49
Great tip! I have Notepad open all day, just for this purpose.
June 30th, 2009 - 06:45
… And notepad++ for all sort of editing and string manipulation. It’s an excellent editor IMHO.
June 30th, 2009 - 20:12
I wrote a tiny Ruby script to take stuff from the clipboard, and strip out the extra carriage returns while keeping it in the clipboard. If anyone’s interested, they could write me. With a little effort, it could be added to right-click menus.
—Michael B.