Whichever application i'm in i use it in file explorer i use it when i'm on the web in onenote word excel or google sheets every time i use windows x i get today's timestamp also if there is a.
Specific text address or bank account that you keep repeating in different applications you can create a shortcut text for it this way you just type in your abbreviation.
And it will automatically replace it with your longer text in all applications it's great for repetitive typing or sending canned email or linkedin responses so what is this based.
On it's a free application and is something i've started to use recently and i hope it's going to benefit you as well it's called auto hotkey it's an open source.
For text expansion which means creating your own abbreviations to auto replace lots of text i'm going to give you a quick overview to help you get started remember it's a free tool so if this is.
Something that you think can help you just download it and give it a go let's start from the beginning you can install the autohotkey app directly from their website which is.
Autohotkey.com just come here click on download and then you can download the current version now you can also download this from the microsoft store just open up the store.
Type in auto hotkey and you should see it pop up here and then just click on get now after you install it and you go through the steps you are going to end up on this page now.
This is actually the help for auto hotkey you can find all the documentation here now on the welcome right here notice that it says before autohotkey can do.
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Anything you need to write a script
Telling it what to do basically create a script add hotkeys run the script so you can go ahead and take your time read through these and see how it works check.Out all the documentation in this video i'm gonna do the steps together with you and share with you some of scripts that might come in handy for you so we are going to do all of this together which.
Means that we don't need this window we can close it after you've installed auto hotkey you should be able to right mouse click for example on your desktop go to new and find the auto hotkey script.
That's what we want to create now we can give this a name i'll call mine favorite shortcuts and enter so it's just important that the extension is ahk don't double click it.
Because double-clicking it is going to run the script basically it's going to add it to your tray here meaning that it's active it's ready for you to use but we don't have any scripts yet.
Because we haven't added our favorite shortcuts yet and to do that we have to right mouse click and open this in notepad so now notice i see edit script i can open it directly like this.
If you don't see that option just open it with the text editor of your choice you're going to see some lines that are already pre-populated these are intended to improve the overall script.
Performance the rest is up to us we can start typing here now there are two main types of scripts they're hotkeys and hot strings so what are hotkeys well to quote the official tutorial a hotkey is.
A key that is hot to the touch obviously they're kidding unless you knocked your tee over your keyboard actually it's usually a combination of keys on the keyboard that you can press to trigger.
An action basically they're your own
Custom shortcuts that can run anywhere in your system okay so let's say the first shortcut that we want to create is to launch an.Application in my case the application i use most which is excel so the way this works is that the first thing you need is the shortcut key combination and i want to use control e.
The way you specify the control key is using the caret symbol this stands for control and then you just type in your key so i want control e this is followed by two columns the two.
Columns separate the hotkey which is this from the action that it's going to trigger now the action comes below that action is run comma excel because excel is a windows.
Application i don't need to specify the path or the extension the action is also followed by a comma to tell it that we are finished with this we need to put the return statement.
This stops the code from going further now before we run this let's just do a few more so we can run them all together if you're wondering what the symbol for windows is it's the hash sign.
So let's say i want to add a fun shortcut for windows j and what i want to happen is a message box to appear the code for that is msgbox comma and then you just.
Type in the message that you want i'll just type this in why not and we're going to end with return now just in case you want to use other common hotkey modifier symbols you can use the.
Exclamation mark for alt or plus for shift you're going to find even more in the official documentation okay so we did two here let's do one other one and this one i find super useful this is to.
Add the current date i'm gonna assign the shortcut hash x and column colon now the first step is to define the format so i'm going to go with format time comma i'll just call this xx and then.
Comma comma and define the type of format that i want so i'll go with yyyy mm and dd then we have to go with send input comma and we want this reflected so percentage sign and double x and.
Percentage again now you don't have to memorize any of the stuff that i'm doing you just can copy them put them somewhere tweak these a little bit to go in the.
Format that you want and reuse them you're going to find a lot of these in the documentation so for example if you're wondering where did i get format time from you'll find it in the.
Documentation so remember this page this was our starter home page if i go to string format time you can find all the different ways and options that you have.
Here with lots of examples so you can just feel free copy some of these and add them to your own code okay so now we have three hotkeys let's test these out i'm gonna close this.
We're definitely going to save now to run this you have to double click it when you double click and it's the first time you are running it you're going to see it pop up here if you make changes.
To it and you double click you're going to get this message that there is an older instance and if you want to replace that you're going to go with yes okay so let's test things out i have the.
Shortcut key control e for launching excel i'm going to try that ctrl e and we should see excel pop up and it does next was that message box and i used the windows and j combination.
Why you're amazing next one was windows x that was to get the current day now for that let's just go anywhere here so i'm in windows explorer i'm gonna let's say create a.
New folder and i'll type a name underscore now i'm gonna use my shortcut key windows x and i get the current year month and day okay so this is a shortcut i can use in.
Any application let's take a look at something else hot strings but before we get into hot strings let me tell you about another tool that's hot on my list.
It's not really a tool it's more like a platform or a community you get to learn different skills really fast so this can be in the area of personal improvement it can be business or whatever you want.
To learn out of pure interest the platform i'm referring to is called skillshare who've been kind enough to sponsor this video what i like about the learning experience there is that you.
Get short condensed classes i usually don't have big chunks of time to dedicate to learning and this way i can use whatever time i have and learn something new really fast so i was super.
Excited to find one of my favorite youtubers in skillshare so of course i immediately took his class you probably know him it's marquez brownlee the class is about how to script shoot and edit.
For youtube if you've ever seen a video by him you're going to appreciate the storytelling and the production quality of his videos some great tips there were how to plan the visuals and how to shoot.
The videos i have a long way to go in comparison but yeah change doesn't have to be one big leap it can be gradual right everyone goes at their own pace so it's classes like this that can help.
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