Custom Cleaner Editor
What is a Custom Cleaner?
A custom cleaner is one or more user-defined actions that can be applied to text. For example, you can use a "Find and Replace" text action to set up an automated find and replace on given text. This action can include regular expressions, a powerful text matching syntax. Another example might be to apply another cleaner (either built-in or custom), and then add additional actions, allowing you to build on existing cleaners.
Text vs. Style
TextSoap supports changing both plain text and rich text. When working with rich text, the text formatting (style) of the text plays an additional role.
You can make text change actions on rich text and TextSoap will attempt to maintain the existing character styles from the original text. This means that bold words stay bold, italic words remain italic, and underlining, fonts and text color stays intact, even as the text is updated.
Additionally, TextSoap allows changing the underlying (character-level) format of the text. This is useful if you need to strip out existing styling like bold or italic, adjust the font, or size. TextSoap can perform the style changes selectively based on the underlying text.
Editor Overview
Before getting started, a quick walk through of the new interface is in order. The custom cleaner (CC) editor has several components to it.

- Action toolbox – contains the list of actions available. Cleaners, which are themselves actions, are listed here too. You can use the category option to show "All" actions, just core "Actions" or just "Cleaners". You can further filter your searches by typing in the filter field.
- Workspace – represent your custom cleaner. Custom cleaners are composed of properties, an action list, and a data table.
A) Properties – contains information related to name and description of your custom cleaner. The name is used when defining groups and the description is presented in a tooltip, like those of built-in cleaners.
B) Action List – individual actions that specify exactly what the custom cleaner does.
C) Data Table – a 4-column table that allows you to store any text data for use by the batch actions.
Building Your First Cleaner
The best way to learn about custom cleaners is to jump in and create it. Let's create a simple custom cleaner to fix any cases where 'TextSoap' is not properly capitalized.
- In the Navigator, select the add button.
- Select "Create new custom cleaner"
- Name the cleaner: "Fix TextSoap Spellings"
When you create or open a custom cleaner, you are presented with a list of possible actions to use and a workspace area. The cleaner has a name, so you can begin by adding your desired actions.
In this example, you will need a "Find and Replace Text" action.
- Drag "Find and Replace Text" item from the action list on the left into the work area.

In the Find field, enter "TextSoap" In the Replace field, enter "TextSoap"
You can test the cleaner with the provided sample text. Select, copy and then paste the following paragraph into the clipboard workspace (or a new text document).
Sample text: Textsoap offers a collection of tools to automate tedious manual text changes. textSOAP can save you time and increase your productivity. Once people use textsoap, they quickly find it indispensable.
- Select the Preview button on the top of the window to test your cleaner.
How This Cleaner Works
This is a good example of a single action addressing a major problem. By default, the Find and Replace Text action ignored case with text matching. To require exact case matching, select the "Match Case" option.
In this case, "Textsoap", "textSOAP" and "textsoap" will all match with the "TextSoap" search. The action will then replace the found text with the correctly cased version "TextSoap".
Congratulations! You have created your first custom cleaner. You can now use this custom cleaner just like any of the built-in cleaners.
--
Workspace
Within the workspace area, you can specify the actions you will use. Certain actions can also contain other actions. These grouping actions behave in a similar fashion to folder, each containing additional actions.
Each action contains a common header components:

- Action Details Control
- Name
- Enable Control
- Customize & User Notes
- Delete Action
Actions View
The workspace consists of actions dragged into it. These actions fall into categories:
- Core Actions : Find and Replace Text is the most common action, but other specialized actions allow you to build a customized text processing behavior.
- Cleaner Actions : An action that applies an existing cleaner to the text. The cleaner may be built-in or another custom cleaner.
- Grouping Actions : a special type of core action acts as a container for other actions.
For a more in-depth look at core actions, see the topic Custom Cleaner Core Actions.
Lists View
Select the "List" option in the toolbar to switch to the Lists View.
Lists allow you to work with larger sets of data. It also allows looking up associated data.
The table consists of up to 4 columns of text. You can copy or paste tab-delimited text and use drag-n-drop to re-arrange rows.
The master list can be divided into sections. There is no real hierarchy, a section is defined as the items from the marker to the next marker (or end of list).
The batch-related actions can use these lists to process multiple find and replaces, setup hyperlinking, etc. If "All Items" is specified, then all the rows will be processed. If a specific section is specified, only those items will be used.
The Find Bar at the top of the list allows for global find and replace. Options allow for matching case, and limiting the search & replace to specific columns.
*Note: TextSoap 7 users will be recognize some of this as a variation of the Bulk Find and Replace action.