MacLab’s Text Cleaner 3.6 ($79, Mac only) fixes text formatting mistakes in text files, as well as in text in a QuarkXPress or InDesign document — without losing the text’s formatting.

• It optionally removes multiple spaces, returns and tabs; removes PC Line feeds; removes email quote symbols; removes line breaks;
• It creates curly or straight quotes; corrects foot and inch marks; corrects apostrophes for year abbreviations (’98); creates or removes en and em dashes; creates or removes ligatures and ellipses;
• It removes spaces before and after tabs, returns, hyphens and em dashes; removes spaces before a period;
• It replaces non-websafe characters with their websafe counterparts; removes html code; and converts 3 periods to an ellipsis.
• You can also apply a Find-and-Replace routine and save combinations of settings as presets for future use.
• If you’re working with plain text files, you can drag batches of them onto Text Cleaner to clean them all at once!

This is a true workhorse utility that you’ll find yourself turning to again and again.

Jay Nelson

Jay Nelson is the editorial director of PlanetQuark.com, and the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly. He’s also the author of the QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7 training titles at Lynda.com, as well as the training videos Quark includes in the box with QuarkXPress 7 . In addition, Jay writes regularly for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines and speaks at industry events.