Text Expansion on a Windows PC with AutoHotkey (HotStrings)
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Try Udemy for Business- Type short abbreviations that will expand in any windows program
- Quickly fill out forms / emails / etc. that require the same text
- Autocomplete words in any Windows program
- Windows / PC user at a beginner level
In our daily life it is AMAZING how frequently we re-type the same words over and over. It might be your name, the name of your company, instructions on performing a recurring task, a greeting, a salutation, etc. The list is truly endless.
Text Expansion (HotStrings) are the simplest and fastest way to start automating your computer!
In this course you will learn how you can save vast amounts of time by utilizing HotStrings from AutoHotkey. If you're frequently typing the same words, phrases, paragraphs, etc. you can have them at your finger-tips in any Windows program!
While the basics of HotStrings are very easy to learn, we also take a deep-dive into various scenarios where they can be more complicated & discuss trouble-shooting "tricky" issues.
- People that wish to be more productive & efficient
- People that enter the same data/text over and over
- People wanting to focus on work that matters, not the mundane
This lecture introduces HotStrings and gives a few examples how you can leverage them in virtually any Windows-based program. HotStrings are similar to autocorrect on your phone however you provide the text you want to be inserted.
In this lecture we review where to download AutoHotkey from and what version we recommend. Unicode 32 bit is the recommended version as it will allow for Unicode characters and work well with most programs.
In this session we discuss various IDEs / Editors for AutoHotkey. AutoHotkey uses plain text thus you could use notepad to edit your files however the Intellisense (color highlighting) and Calltips (code suggestions) are extremely helpful!
We used SciTE4AutoHotkey in our tutorials however AHK Studio & Notepad++ are just as strong editors.
This session we discuss the basics you want to have in your HotString script. The following three lines are the code you most-likely want to have in your initial file.
#SingleInstance, Force ;ensure only 1 version of this script will be run at a time
#Persistent ;Don't automatically exit
#NoEnv ;No Envoronment (saves memory)
In this session we talk through the concept of having your HotStrings in one file verse individual files. If you plan to create content you'll share withe colleagues, you might want to use multiple files. If you are only going to use them yourself then one is fine.
There are some characters that AutoHotkey reserves for special actions. This lecture we review special characters and how to send them. You can also send things as "raw" by adding an "r" in between the first two colons.
We also switch to using a HotKey to reload the script. In the example it is the "Browser_forward" key (which you may/may not have on your keyboard). It can be really any key (or a combination of keys) but you want something that is convenient/easy for you to hit. In this example, when you hit it, it triggers the "reload" command and reloads the script for me.
Windows 7, 8, and 10 have the User Access Control which is Microsoft feature that reduces the risk of programs hijacking your computer. We do NOT recommend you turn it off (however you might disable it as a quick test to prove it is the cause of your issue).
The code shared in the video to elevate your script is as follows:
;**********The script needs to be run at an elevated level- this takes care of that*****
if not A_IsAdmin ;http://ahkscript.org/docs/Variables.htm#IsAdmin
{
Run *RunAs "%A_ScriptFullPath%" ; Requires v1.0.92.01+
ExitApp
}