Text can be messy. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it drives me freakin’ nuts and I’m sure this may have happened to you.
Someone sends a document to edit, and the text is a mess because the file formats used to create the file didn’t match. Tabs are broken, paragraphs are in the wrong place, some parts are styled, others are not, and even fonts and sizes are out of wack.
There are only two ways to clean up a document that’s infected with dirty formatted text. Line by line– the manual way that makes you sweat.
Or, TextSoap, which cleans text almost automatically.
Forget fixing messy formatted text manually. TextSoap is a Mac app that gives you quick access to dozens of cleaning and scrubbing tools that overcome multiple format errors. Copy the messed up document to TextSoap, apply format tools, wait for a cleaned file.
TextSoap works well with plain text, of course, but also works within other Mac word processors to apply cleaning rules.
And, speaking of rules, TextSoap comes with over three dozen text actions that make it easy to fix paragraph problems, style formats, broken line endings, and much more.
TextSoap’s claim to fame is the ability to create rules or actions to match your particular text cleaning needs. These actions can be used again whenever the need arises.
Got more than one file that needs scrubbing? TextSoap can work magic on files in batches, too.
Plus, TextSoap also uses Autosave (to keep versions of actions for specific needs), Versions, and is Fullscreen aware for Mac OS X Lion and OSX Mountain Lion. The latest version gets more geeky and is scriptable, realigns text in paragraphs, and even cleans HTML files.
While TextSoap isn’t cheap, it’s likely to pay it’s way with the first few projects that would normally be cleaned and reformatted by hand, line by line. If your needs are modest, there’s the much less expensive TextSoap Express.
What’s not to like? Aside from the simple operation of basic cleaning, TextSoap can be complicated to create actions specific to your text cleaning requirements.