When doing research on the Internet, I often need to save information from Web pages to my computer. This is easy for simple quotes or whole paragraphs--copying the info and pasting it into a text document works fine. But when there are multiple lines throughout a site that I need, copying, switching programs, and pasting each individual piece of information starts to get annoying. Also, if I'm doing a lot of copying and pasting, I end up with an extremely long text document, making it hard to find what I need.

I did a little digging and found some programs that eliminate the need to do the software-switching dance. Instead of switching back and forth, I copy each piece of information (graphics, text, or otherwise) into a clipboard utility, then pick and choose how I want to organize it on my computer once all the research is done. Also, these handy utilities separate information, making it easy to find each piece later on.

If you do a lot of software switching when doing research, try one of my three top clipboard utilities for getting all the info in one fell swoop.

Clipboard Buddy opens up like a utility drawer from the side of your desktop where you can retrieve your last 20 copied items. You can also set a locked clipboard file so that the same items remain in there while you're doing repetitive tasks. This one is excellent for data entry. (Shareware/Windows)

ClipCache Plus lets you drag and drop pieces of information from Web pages for quick transfer to your computer. You can even separate your clips into categories such as Graphics or Text and add names so that you can quickly find what you need when your research is done. (Shareware/Windows)

CopyPaste X for Mac OS X lets you store text, images, and more and makes it all editable from within the program. You can work with up to 100 clipboards. It also offers handy tools such as an e-mail extractor to grab a list of e-mail addresses from a paragraph. (Shareware/Mac)

Switching back and forth between programs can be a pain. I think you'll find that gathering information is easier and faster with one of these utilities.