Repeatedly typing in the same common words or phrases is a bit of a case of déjà vu and a bit annoying at times. The exact same thing can be said for running or executing frequently used commands in programs or predefined text in textboxes or windows. When you repeat things over and over, you’re not being terribly productive and constantly switching between windows to cut, copy or paste pieces of text is not fun. It’s also not much fun if you’re one of those folks who’s not particularly great at spelling long words and are sometimes a bit too far out for a spellchecker to correctly identify what you have typed.
It’s much better to have a way of entering these common phrases or pieces of text automatically using a program to remember these words for you and enter them with the press of a couple of shortcut keys. There are a quite a few around and some are pretty advanced and can perform a number of tasks over and above simply entering text for you. A couple of utilities I have mentioned before, Phrase Express and KeyboardExt can perform hotkey and shortcut operations amongst other things, and can be used to perform some other very advanced tasks.
Although the utility I am talking about here, QuickTextPaste, is another one that does a similar thing, there are a couple of differences that set it apart from a lot of others in this field. The first thing is the program is completely portable and an incredibly small standalone executable of only 48K. An ini file is created with your configuration settings in the same location so it’s an ideal tool for your USB toolkit.
The second thing to mention is QuickTextPaste is very easy to use and setup, making it more suitable for those not wanting the extra features of more advanced, and therefore quite often more complicated software. Obviously, being portable also means the same hotkey text snippets or command shortcuts can travel with you to any other system. English, German, Italian and Swedish languages are also included, click the ‘#LNG’ button at the bottom of the main window. As you would expect, memory usage is kept to a minimum and it’s currently using around 2.5MB on my system.
As the emphasis here is to be quick and easy to set up and use, there is only one window to worry about. A selection of shortcuts is already included and can be edited, copied or deleted using the buttons provided. The process of creating your own shortcut combination is really very simple.
1. Enter the text that is to be pasted when the hotkey is pressed. If you want to run a command, precede this with ‘run:’. Eg; ‘run: C:/Windows/regedit.exe’.
2. The shortcuts can be stacked meaning you can enter multiple shortcuts for the same hotkey combination. This will bring up a menu when the hotkey is pressed. ‘Menu-Text’ is the name given to the function in the menu.
3. Select the hotkey (Left Win key, Right Win Key or Ctrl + Alt) from the dropdown and a letter, number or ‘F’ key to be pressed. Be careful here not to conflict with system shortcuts if you can. As an example, Win key + L will bring up the Windows Lock screen. When done, click ‘Add’. Then simply insert text into the chosen program or run the chosen command using the combination.
As I mentioned in step 2, you can create a menu with multiple entries. To do this create a shortcut with a chosen hotkey and then simply add another using the same hotkey. Then when the hotkey is pressed, you will get a menu containing these items. A ‘Left Win key + C’ example is provided in the default configuration.
QuickTextPaste is small, light and designed to be easy to operate, literally using the Ctrl + V Windows Hotkey to perform its functions. Try using it in a command prompt to see what I mean.
Compatible with all Windows versions from 2000 – Windows 8 32bit and 64bit.
Best is AutoHotKey
I use texter from life hacker, sadly it’s not updated for win 7.but a easy and fantastic tool.
Thanks, I will try it
Do they still nag the tripe out of you[I think it was after 30 days] to buy spartan
I liked it, but nagware is not for me
Hi HAL,
a similar, but… I’d say a quite different software, well I mean it saves things one must constantly type over and over is the M8 Free Clipboard from m8software.com/
in which you can save text, numbers, images etc and paste them directly into any application. I prepare real state financing documentation, and have always to fill up several forms with repeated information, like client’s name, ID number, address etc. over and over again. The M8 is like a spreadsheet. in which one can have up to 20 different “tabs” – called sheets, and in each one you can save up to 25 pieces of information. When I’m entering information into a form, I click on the task icon bar on the M8 icon, the sheets appear and just click on the information I want to be pasted on the form and it’s done. In the Spartan program (not free) one has the same number of sheets, but can save a huge amount of data in each one. Give it a try!
Thanks Mario, I’ll certainly check it out!
Tried it few days ago, thumbs up, small & portable