AutoHotkey News Sep 29th, 2022

I hope you’re aware that, like most people (and probably you). I have no background in programming.

None, zilch, na-da❗

And yet, in a few hours, I’ve been able to automate what entire IT departments say will cost tens-of-thousands-of-dollars!

How have I been able to do this? Is it I’m a super-genious? Nope! Is it that I have is a dogmatic tenacity to never give up and a refusal to do the mundane.

My time is WAY too valuable for that!

Mundane repetitive tasks is precisely what lead me to AutoHotkey.

It’s, by far, the easiest language for non-programmers to pick-up and do AMAZING things! I saved so much time automating my jobs it allowed me to spend even more time learning more about AutoHotkey.

Much of which is what I’ve put in our AutoHotkey courses

You see, the “bad part” of AutoHotkey is there’s so many things you can learn it can be really hard to know where to start. That’s what my AutoHotkey courses really help with! Giving you a clear and simple path to follow really helps guide you to becoming that person where you can prove others wrong when they say “nothing can be done”.

I will also shamelessly mention our AHK Hero program as a great way for you to “level-up”.

We have students of all ages and skill levels. We’re helping each other, pointing you in the right direction. Why not give it a try? In addition to 25% off of our premium courses & client work we’re offering 2 hours a week where we hang out in zoom sharing and learning from each other.

Now on with the show…

How to ask your AutoHotkey Questions

A lot of people that use AutoHotkey are 💯% new to programming. They often try and ask questions on the AutoHotkey forum, SubReddit, my YouTube channel, etc. but often don’t get their questions answered. I try and respond to every comment on my videos but, often, I don’t even understand what the person is asking.

In this video I walk through some of the things you should think about when asking your AutoHotkey question.

How to ask your AutoHotkey question and get it answered❗

How to Reference a Variable in AutoHotkey

I’ve been working on an on-boarding email drip campaign to help people truly-new to AutoHotkey. This video is extract from Intro to AutoHotkey where I show just how easy it is to refer to a variable.

I’m just including it here in case you’re just starting out with AutoHotkey and want to see how easy it is.

How to reference a Variable in AutoHotkey

Basics of Debugging: Where to start

On that same note, I recently recorded this overly-simple video of what you might want to check for if your AutoHotkey code isn’t working. When you’re new to coding, the steps to take are not obvious! This video breaks down some key things to look for.

Troubleshooting your AutoHotkey Script (extracted from Intro to AutoHotkey)

Creating a Toggle with a Hotkey

A subscriber recently asked me how to setup a variable that toggles off a hotkey. In this short video I show how simple it can be (as long as you remember the one Directive that you need to tweak)

How to easily Toggle a variable with a Hotkey in AutoHotkey

Move your taskbar to the side

One of the simplest things you can do, that has a dramatic effect on your efficiency, is to get your computer setup in a way that helps you work smarter, not harder. If you don’t already have your taskbar on the side, I highly encourage you to give it a try for 3 days. The first day you’ll hate me but, by the 3^rd day, you’ll be LOVING IT!💖 In this video I show you how I optimized mine and put toolbars at the top and bottom to have ~50 shortcuts taking up a very small amount of space.

Simple hack to optimize your taskbar and maximize your desktop

Projecting X days out

One of the very first scripts I ever wrote that had a GUI was for a friend of mine that worked in Logistics. He was constantly needing to select a date in the future and he absolutely loved this simple little gem I wrote for him. If you’re new to GUIs, our GUIs are easy course walks you through creating GUIs step-by-step.

Cool tool to easily project days out | Days in the future (2021)

📚 What we’re reading

What’s New in the Task Manager in Windows 11’s 2022 Update
How to Stop Legitimate Emails From Getting Marked as Spam (Don’t forget to whitelist ours❗)
Nearby Share on Android Is About to Get Way More Useful
These 5 Popular Chrome Extensions Are Malware: Delete Them Now

⚡️Productivity tips: If You’re Having A crappy Day, Press the ‘reset’ button.

When things go sideways and you feel your attitude going negative find a way to “walk away” from what you’re doing. As they say

”A bad attitude is like a flat tire. If you don’t change it, you’ll never go anywhere.”

One of my favorite ways to “restart the day” is by taking a quick nap. If that’s not something you can do, go for a walk, crank up some tunes, or just meditate. Don’t let your day go to a waste…

🤣 A spot of Humor

I wish I had seen this when my son was that age!

AHK Hero🦸‍♀️

Want more time than the free hour? Have content that you can’t have on YouTube? Consider joining the 🦸‍♀️AHK Hero club! Members receive big discounts to courses, consultations, tutoring, done for you project work, etc.
They also have access to exclusive & pre-released content and a 2nd “office hours” session which isn’t on YouTube.

🗣️ 💭 Quotable quotes

If you are not ready today, you will be even less so tomorrow — Ovid
Don’t wait. The time will never be just right. — Napoleon Hill
Work first, reward second, in order — Dan Kennedy
Tough times never last, but tough people do❗ — Robert Schuller

Live AutoHotkey Support Tomorrow

Don’t forget on Friday’s you can get free AutoHotkey support on my YouTube channel. Or you can sign up for reminders and join the zoom room.

The-Automator

Joe, Isaias and staff

Howdy %Name%,

AHKCON – World’s first 🅰utoHotkey Conference!

We’re had an amazing time at AHKCon. ⑧ hours of great learnings & conversations❗ We had a great turn-out and received great feedback

You can go here and see the results to the polls & get the chat files.

AHK v1 vs v2 (Panel: Dimitri Geerts, Isaias, Joe)
Various Programming approaches, which to use & when (Panel: Maestrith, Tank, Isaias, Joe)
Objects / COM / Data structure (Lecture: Isaias & GeekDude[helping])
Open discussion / Q&A (lunch)
Regex/String Manipulation (Panel: Isaias, Maestrith, Joe)
IDEs: Which to use, When, Why (Panel: Isaias, Maestrith, Joe)
Data storage approaches (Panel: Isaias, Maestrith, Tank, Joe)
Wrap up / Q&A

Now on with the show…

Sending “special” characters with ⒶⒽⓀ 😁❗

Ever try to send “special” Uniocode characters (Non-ANSI)? Emojis or non-English characters are often problematic to send. Often it’s just that your file is not being saved in UTF-8 format however, for many people, encoding is a confusing topic so we made a simple tool to provide you with AutoHotkey syntax that will work regardless of your file encoding. If you’d like to learn more about file encoding you should check out the webinar lead by Jean Lalonde.

How to send Unicode Characters with a Hotkey❗

Avoiding the coming catastrophe

AutoHotkey v2️ isn’t the default version now but it’s probably going to be pretty soon! If you haven’t started working with it, now is an amazing time to loop over all of your AutoHotkey scripts adding the #Requires directive. We wrote a little tool to make it easy for you!

Avoid the coming catastrophe 💣 and use this script today!

Using all your keys

I have a TON of Hotkeys! So many that I was actually having a hard time coming up with key combinations that weren’t already taken. The other day Isaias and I were talking about looking at the #KeyHistory directive and he was explaining how easy it is to look at the Virtual Key (VC) and Scan Code (SC) to see if AutoHotkey can detect those “odd” keys on your keyboard.

How to map a mystery key to a hotkey | 🗺❓🔑

Pasting plain text

More and more tools allow you to paste plain text however, when you have a program that doesn’t have that option, it’s a life-saver! Most people would open Notepad, paste it, copy, it, and then paste it. This of course is both time consuming and you “lose” the original clipboard. In this video we show how you can tie it to a hotkey, and still have your original formatting!

the Naked Clipboard: Adding a GUI to Paste Plain Text AutoHotkey script