All the operating systems that have a graphical user interface (GUI) come with a clipboard feature. With the help of the clipboard, a user can copy some data temporary into the clipboard memory and later paste it into some other application or location on a drive.
Usually we can copy only a file to paste it somewhere else on a drive. The data such as text or image cannot be pasted as a file. But with the help of an open-source tool called PasteIntoFile, you can paste any kind of data from the clipboard directly to a file. This saves us from the trouble of opening an editor, pasting the clipboard content inside it, then saving it as a file, and finally choosing a filename. By skipping so many steps, it makes everything so easy.
When we install PasteIntoFile, it comes with a configuration window in which we can decide how it is going to behave. Basically, we can choose which content-menu entries are to be added for the Windows File Explorer. We can choose one or all of these content menu entries : “Paste into file”, “Copy file content”, and “Replace with clipboard content”.
The content-menu “Paste into file” creates a new file with the contents of the clipboard. It choose a filename based on the current date & time. It chooses a file extension depending on the type of the clipboard data.
When we right-click on a file and choose “Copy file content”, that file’s data is copied to the clipboard. Similarly, we can right-click on a file and choose “Replace with clipboard content”, which overwrites that file’s data with that from the clipboard.
When we try to use “Paste into file” feature, it shows a file save dialog. Here we can choose a custom filename, a file extension, and the location folder where the file is going to be created. It also displays a small preview of the clipboard content so that the user knows what is going to be saved.
In the settings, we can choose “Auto-save” which skips this file save window and chooses the filename based on the current date and time. We can also choose to make this program run automatically at Windows logon.
If you have enabled “Auto-save”, it becomes very hard to access the settings. According to the developer, you can hold the SHIFT key and then launch PasteIntoFile for accessing the settings in that case. One other way to access the settings is to delete the “user.config” file located in one of the sub-folders of “%LocalAppData%\PasteIntoFile\” and then try to use PasteIntoFile.
You can download PasteIntoFile from https://github.com/eltos/PasteIntoFile.