How do I create a Text Snippet and paste it when I need it?

Snippets are pieces of text that you can paste into the active application using the QAP popup menu, hotstrings or shortcuts. Text snippets can contain characters, end-of-lines, and tabs.

Creating a snippet

  1. In the Customize window, click the Add button and select the type Snippet.
  2. In the Add Favorite dialog box, give the snippet a name for the menu and enter the text in the Content text box. In this text box, pressing Enter will add an end-of-line and pressing Ctrl + Tab will enter a tab.

  3. If the content does not fit in the Content text zone, you can expand the text box to make editing easier by clicking the + sign. When the content is expanded (as below), use the – sign to return to normal display. You can also display the snippet content in fixed font and choose the font size.

  4. In the Menu Options tab, select the parent menu and item position as for other type of favorites. Before saving, you will find it helpful to set a Shortcut or an Hotstring for your snippet. Click one of the two Change buttons (you could set both options if you wish) and set the shortcut or the hotstring as illustrated below.

    In these examples, the selected shortcut (left side) is Shift + Control + H and the hotstring trigger (right side) is #html# (TIP: for hotstrings, use “#” or any other symbol to make the hotstring trigger unique).

  5. In the Advanced Settings tab, you can enter text in Prompt before pasting the snippet that will be displayed with a prompt to hit Enter or Space to paste the favorite, or Esc to cancel it. The prompt can include placeholders (see the tips and tricks, below).
  6. Finally, click Add to save the favorite snippet.

You can also add a Snippet using the content of the Windows Clipboard. See Can I create a Snippet using the Clipboard and define its Hotstring in one step?

Pasting snippets

You can paste snippets in three ways (as for other types of favorites) but the first one is particularly useful for snippets. First, select the keyboard insertion point in a text zone of the active window. Then, paste the snippet using one of these techniques:

  1. If you defined an hotstring (as in the example above, on the right), type the hotstring trigger, in our example: #html# and press Enter or Space. As you press the termination key, the hotstring trigger is replaced (or “expanded”) with the content of the snippet. Voilà !
  2. If you defined a shortcut (as the left example above), hit the shortcut key, in our example Shift+Control+H. The snippet is immediately pasted at the keyboard insertion point in the targeted window.
  3. Or open the popup menu and select the snippet. It will be pasted at the keyboard insertion point in the targeted window.

The snippet’s content is sent to the active application at the current insertion point as you would do using the Windows Clipboard Paste command. Although, the content of the Clipboard is not impacted by this action.

Snippets tips and tricks

  • If you open the popup menu by clicking the QAP icon in the Notification zone (Windows Tray), middle-clicking in the task bar or the Desktop, the active window loses the focus (become inactive) when the popup menu is open. In order to paste its content, QAP will ask you to activate the window where you want to send the snippet. QAP will display a message asking you to select the target window and hit the Enter key when you are done. You have up to 10 seconds to select the target application, set the keyboard insertion point and press Enter.
  • When trying to paste a snippet from the popup menu, some application or control (text area) may lose focus when the QAP menu is popped up making it impossible to paste the snippet in the active window. Pasting a snippet to the Explorer address bar is one example. An alternative is to assign a hotstring trigger or a keyboard shortcut to the snippet (Edit Favorite, in Menu Options tab). When invoked from a hotstring or a keyboard hotkey, the focus stays in the active window.
  • You can use the Windows Clipboard, user input or the current date-time to insert variable pieces of text in your snippets. For example, when you launch your favorite, QAP automatically replaces the placeholder {Clipboard} with the current content of the Windows Clipboard. Placeholders can also be replaced with various file locations. See Can I insert values in favorites location, parameters or snippets using placeholders?
  • When a snippet is edited with the Automatically encode end-of-lines checked, the snippet is saved to the settings file (quickaccesspopup.ini) with end-of-lines and tabs are automatically converted to symbols `n  (new line) and `t  (tab). Backtick characters (accent grave) are saved as double-backtick (` `). If you prefer to encode these characters yourselves, uncheck the check box.
  • When pasting the content of a snippet to the active window, QAP inserts three small safety delays. By default, the total duration of these delays is 300 ms (3/10th of a second). If your system is quick enough, you can try to reduce these delays (40 ms, 80 ms and 180 ms) in the Options window, Various Advanced Options tab.

See also:

6) Automating your work , ,

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