Pocket QuickPaster
from Cactus Factory

Pocket QuickPaster from Cactus Factory helps you organize & store chunks of text for easy copying & pasting into other applications. Whether it's a template for an email, meeting notes, various email signatures or anything else you normally type over & over, Pocket QuickPaster handles it.

I have always customized and used the My Text portion of Inbox for shortcuts, but it's limited to 10 items, and works only in Inbox and Messenger. Pocket QuickPaster gives you the ability to create numerous chunks of text templates, and copy & paste them to Clipboard for use in any application on your Pocket PC. Not only that, but you can organize things into categories as well, which is convenient.

The application installs with some sample categories such as Signatures, Meeting Notes, Reports, etc, with sample templates in the categories as well. This allows a new user to get an idea of how the application can be set up. It also allows you to build from that sample, rather than start from scratch. Any of the sample categories & templates can be edited to your liking. Here is the list that I have created so far. I kept some of the samples, and made some of my own:

There are two predefined categories in QuickPaster: Favorites and Macros.
The Favorites category is where you can keep links to your high-usage templates (but not the templates themselves) for faster access. You can add a link to any template into Favorites. Notice the little icon next to each Template item, indicating the category it's from. I only have three Favorites listed right now...

The Macros category consists of a fixed set of special templates. Macros with DT prefix provide information on time and date in a format set by the "Regional Settings" of your Pocket PC, and Macros with OI prefix provide information on the Pocket PC owner taken from the "Owner Information" in the system data. This is powerful, because the macros form their content at the moment of usage (the moment of copying to clipboard), so they always provide up-to-date information on time, date and owner. You can't change the set of macros in the Macros category, but you can use them in other templates. More on that later.

You can't delete or rename Favorites and Macros categories. Macro-templates cannot be deleted, renamed or moved to another category, and Favorites links cannot be moved to another category. All other categories are editable and can be deleted if you wish.

Creating a Category and Templates

I've only been using this application for about two weeks, but I'm coming up with cool ideas for it all the time! For this review, I will create a category I'll call Expressions. This will hold countless cool quotes and other such thought-provoking tidbits for insertion into emails and other written correspondence. How cool to have these handy to insert into emails!

Clicking on this icon creates a new category	I named it Expressions, and even added a description (which might come in handy if you end up with tons of categories!)
There are a variety of icons you can choose from to assign to your categories

Next, I create and add Templates in my new category:

This icon is grayed out until you select a category, then it's available for you to add a new Template.	Pocket QuickPaster auto-names the Short name for the Template. You can name it yourself, which is a good idea if you plan to use this template in another template (more on that later).
Here is my partial list of cool expressions, ready to copy & paste wherever I need them!

That was the standard way to create categories and templates. Now I will illustrate inserting Macros and other templates. I'll create a new Report Template:

After typing Project Status Report, I insert a date Macro.	I choose the Long Date for this example...
This is how it appears. The insertion portion is in brackets. They only appear here...	Inserting my name via the Owner Information (OI)...
After some other text, I finish it off by inserting my email signature for MultiMatt Services.	Preview shows how the template will appear when pasted into another app. Pretty slick!

One more thing on inserting templates. If you know the name of the template you want to insert, all you have to do is type double brackets {{ and then the Short Name of the template, closing it with double brackets again }}. Hence the reason you might want to name templates with something other than the default name. No need to memorize all those short names, though - you can always insert via the drop-down list!

Favorites

Adding a template to the Favorites list is a piece of cake. See the animation below:

Conclusion

At first I wondered if I would really use an application like this, but the more I have played with it, the more I see it's value. Using the Expressions category as an example, there are a myriad of uses for Pocket QuickPaster. Even if you use a keyboard for data entry on a Pocket PC, this application can prove helpful, particularly with repetitive large sections of text.

Pocket QuickPaster requires Windows Mobile 2003/SE (portrait mode only) or it can run on Pocket PC 2002 devices with the .NET Compact Framework installed.
The file size of Pocket QuickPaster is very small - about 140kb, which is nice. Some apps are getting mighty large these days!

Pocket QuickPaster is $14.95, and you can try it or buy it here. The trial lasts for 14 days, and is fully functional. Check it out!

Special thanks to Viacheslav at Cactus Factory for sending us a full registered version of Pocket QuickPaster to review.
This application was reviewed on the Samsung i700 Pocket PC Phone Edition running Windows Mobile 2003.

Screenshots in this review were obtained using Pocket Controller - Professional
which was generously provided by SOTI