TextEdit copying query

asquire · Apr 12, 2008

Hi all

I have 50,000 separate lines in textedit. Each line contains about 25 letters max.

What I need to do is select and copy for example line 24000 to line 50000. To literally scroll over these lines will take an eternity plus I have 17 such files.

Is there better way of doing this i.e. some command I am missing. I tried pasting to Numbers but there is no helpful function etc their either. I cannot find anything in automator.

Any help would be appreciated.

TKs
recent mac convert.

cwa107 · Apr 12, 2008

asquire said:
Hi all

I have 50,000 separate lines in textedit. Each line contains about 25 letters max.

What I need to do is select and copy for example line 24000 to line 50000. To literally scroll over these lines will take an eternity plus I have 17 such files.

Is there better way of doing this i.e. some command I am missing. I tried pasting to Numbers but there is no helpful function etc their either. I cannot find anything in automator.

Any help would be appreciated.

TKs
recent mac convert.

I would take a look at a more robust Text Editor like Text Wrangler to be honest. Those sound like pretty heavy duty text files.

technologist · Apr 12, 2008

I second TextWrangler...it should handle large files better than TextEdit.

Also, to more directly address your question...you can select large areas of text by clicking to place the insertion point at the beginning of the desired selection, and then holding down the shift key and clicking again at the end. So, just click, scroll, and shift-click. No need to drag over thousands of lines. (This should work in most any application.)

asquire · Apr 12, 2008

cwa107 and technologist

Excellent. Thank you very much. Such a simple solution that I feel like an idiot for not knowing. The text files are actually going to be used in three arrays on VB(I still have to learn xcode!). The system cannot handle 900,000 array items so I have to split the original file data up and run sub programs on them. You have made this process a billion times easier.

Tks
squire

ps nice to see Deming is still being read.

TextEdit copying query

asquire

cwa107

technologist

asquire

Shop Amazon