Thread Subject: GUI simple help

I am new at GUI and I am using the guide to create my GUI and the code that comes along with it. I need help with two things:

1) Once in the edit text area, I want to clear the contents I tried this

set(handles.transcripton_input, 'String',' ')
But it creates those ' ' if the string is small, how can I take care of that.

2)

tran = get(hObject,'String')

i want to store this string as a cell array and append it

i know this works by doing this:

samp = [];
samp = [samp; {'some string'}]

and so on but how can I do that with the input string. where eveery time user enters it stores like a cell in tran.

Thanks alot for anyones help/input!