Tools Menu

Prepare filter for distribution
This item clears the Trial Input and Output areas and the Scratch Pad area, so any data that you have been testing with won't be seen by the people who receive your filter.

Disable prompting
This item checks the filter for any form of user prompting and offers to disable it. This is very useful when you need to automate a complex filter, because it saves having to check each and every search/replace filter to see if prompting is enabled, and also checking the input filter to see if Prompt on Binary Files or Prompt Before Each File is checked.

Put sample in Trial Input area
Depending on the Input Filter's selection, either grabs a sample of text from the clipboard, or grabs the entire first file in the file list. An error message is shown if there are no files in the file list or the file cannot be found.

Move Trial Output to Trial Input
Copies the text in the Trial Output area back to the Trial Input area.

Verify filter list
This command checks all the filters in the filter list for errors. This action is always performed before a filter list is run.

Filter wizard
Now found in the Filters Menu, the Filter Wizard provides a step-by-step method for beginners to construct a TextPipe filter list.

Web-based filter wizard
Now found in the Filters Menu, this filter wizard shows how easy it is to use a web page to control TextPipe to perform custom tasks.

Customize shell extensions
This option lets you customize the items that appear in the right-click menu in Windows Explorer when you click on a file, folder or drive.

Show command line
Displays the command line used to start TextPipe. This can be used to trouble-shoot command line parameters if you use macros to substitute variables.

Command line wizard
Gives examples of invoking the current filter from the command line.

Clipboard viewer
Displays the Windows clipboard viewer, which displays the current contents of the Windows clipboard. This can be very handy for testing a set of filters, because you can easily see what happens to the text, both before and after.

Notepad
Displays NotePad, a small editor useful for editing plain text files (files that contain no formatting like bold, fonts etc). This can be very handy for generating test data for a set of filters. NotePad is automatically installed with Windows.

Wordpad
Displays WordPad, a small editor useful for editing both plain text files (files that contain no formatting like bold, fonts etc) and Word documents, Rich Text Format (RTF) documents and Windows Write (WRI) documents. This can be very handy for generating test data for a set of filters.

Character map
Displays Windows Character Map. This program is usually used to insert special characters into documents, and it can also be used to determine the ASCII code of a character.

Calculator
Displays the Windows Calculator.

Show log file
Moved to Filter options window.

Truncate log file
Moved to Filter options window.

Command line wizard

This function is found in the Tools menu\Command line wizard.

The command line wizard displays actual examples of how to run the current filter from the command line in various modes. Click the Refresh button to display new examples if the current filter changes.

Customize shell extensions

This option lets you customize the TextPipe menu items that appear in the right-click menu in Windows Explorer when you click on a file, folder or drive.

This function is found in the Tool menu\Customize shell extensions.

Show command line

This function is found in the Tools menu\Show command line.

This function is useful if you are not sure how your command line arguments are being passed to TextPipe. TextPipe does not show quoted parameters in the grid - the actual grid contents show how TextPipe has interpreted the command line. The string adds quotes back in for parameters that contain spaces - it is not an exact representation of the original command line. The text also shows the current path (PATH), and all the environment variables passed to TextPipe when it was started.