Home Archive by category "Text / String" (Page 13)

Category: Text / String

Windows autocorrect- Use AutoHotKey to replace text in any Windows program

windows autocorrect

Windows autocorrect- Adding HotStrings in AutoHotKey

For about 20 years I loved using autocorrect feature in Word and Excel to help me write commonly used phrases.  Unfortunately, at that time, MS office didn’t sync across programs so I had to maintain my list of corrections in each program.  Worse yet; I also had to repeat it on every computer that I used.

About a decade ago I read an article which mentioned AutoHotKey had built in “Hotstrings” which provided a similar functionality but would work in any windows program.  (AutoHotKey has a ton of other great features but this is the one that has the largest appeal to the most users.)

I think of hotstrings and a windows autocorrect.  Used intelligently you can tell the computer when I type a few letters, replace the abbreviation I just typed with a full sentence, paragraph, etc.  It is fairly easy to add Hotstrings in AutoHotKey however there is a script which speeds-up the process.  The below video walks through the process.

Text file explorer-Determine file headers & delimiters without opening file

Text file explorer

Text File ExplorerText file explorer

I often work with large text files in which the file extension (.txt, .dat, .csv, .tab) doesn’t always indicate what type of delimiter is used in the file.  When the file is small, I’ll typically just “pop” it open in SciTE / Notepad.  Large files (anything over 20 megs) often take a fair amount of time to read and very large files ( a gig or more) will often run into out of memory issues.

On top of wanting to know the delimiter, I also frequently want to know what fields / Headers are in the file.   This normally means I have to open it in a text editor or Excel and review.  I wrote the below Text File Explorer in AutoHotkey script to simplify the above.  I can highlight a file from Windows Explorer and quickly detect the type of delimiter plus display headers if I care to.

Text file explorer AutoHotkey code:


Here’s a video demonstrating the usage of the Text file Explorer

AutoHotkey HotString tutorial- Walk through how to create & many uses


HotStrings / Text Expansion AutoHotkey HotString tutorialI believe HotStrings are one of the simplest & most productive tools you can use!  In this AutoHotkey HotString tutorial Jackie Sztuk from JZApp.com and I walk through many uses and how easy they are to create, maintain, and use.  There are some great tutorials on the AutoHotkey site as well as a small script that makes adding new HotStrings a breeze.

If you’d like to have a “spell check” running in every windows program, you can use this file:

Remember we have a Udemy course teaching HotStrings!

Here is the AutoHotkey HotString tutorial Video

 

hotstring text replacement