Many TextAloud users listen to large text files, such as ebooks.  Large files present many problems, including difficulty in navigation, audio files that are too large for portable devices, and technical problems with some voices.  Eventually TextAloud will include many tools to help with this task, including the ability to split audio files into multiple audio files based on length.

In the mean time, we are adding a text file splitting utility to make the process easier.  It will take a large .txt file, and allow you to easily split it into multiple .txt files on your computer based on size or keywords (such as "Chapter"), providing multiple smaller .txt files that can be loaded into TextAloud.

Step #1
Make sure you have version 1.452 or later of TextAloud.  You can find out your version number by doing Help->About in TextAloud.  If you have an earlier version, download and install the latest version from
http://nextup.com/TextAloud/download.html

Step #2
Start with a large .txt file.  You may want to make sure its filename is shorter than 20 characters, since this makes it easier for TextAloud to deal with title length limits.

Step #3
Within TextAloud, do File->File Splitter Utility on the main menu.  This will open the File Splitter window.

The Input File Name, is the .txt file you wish to split.  Use the browse button to locate your text file.

The Output File Directory is the directory where you want the new smaller .txt files to be placed.  Use the browse button to locate the directory for this, ideally, using the new folder to make a new directory for the output files.

The individual .txt files that are created will have the same name as the original file, with a number appended to the end of the file name.  Files can be split based either on the size of text to place in each file, or based on looking for a keyword, and splitting each time a keyword is found.

For the example of an ebook, where each chapter is noted in the text by "Chapter 1", "Chapter 2", you should choose split method of keyword, then for the comma delimited list of strings, you would put in "chapter" (without the quotes).

Step #4
After setting the split method, click the Preview button.  This will tell you how many files the text will be split into.  This gives you a chance to adjust size or correct keywords if it isn't splitting into a reasonable number of files.

Once you are happy with the predicted split, click the Split button, and after it is complete, you can use Windows Explorer to look in the output directory and you will see the newly created .txt files.

Step #5
You now have multiple smaller files that make up the original text.  Within TextAloud, do File->Open and navigate to the output directory you had specified.  You can open multiple .txt files at a time by holding down the control button and click individual text files.

Note that you shouldn't open more than 30 files at a time in TextAloud because of resource issues, but assuming you are in multi-article mode, you can open several of these .txt files at a time.

That is it.  Please let us know any problems you have with the process, suggestions you might have, and whether or not you find this utility useful.  You can email us at support@nextup.com