get the selected text in any active window Topic is solved

[surfactant]

The code fail to get the selected text in any active window. How can it be fixed? Thank you!

Code: Select all

$^+F12::

   WinActive("A")
   ControlGetFocus, my_Control
   ControlGet, my_Text, Selected,, %my_Control%
   MsgBox % "my_Text = " . my_Text

return

[mikeyww]

Code: Select all

F3::
ControlGet, sel, Selected,, Edit1, ahk_exe notepad.exe
MsgBox, 64, Selected text, %sel%
Return

image220112-0106-001_cr.png (32.68 KiB) Viewed 5538 times

[surfactant]

Hi @mikeyww Thank you for your quick reply! Is it possible to make it work in any desktop applications, e.g. Notepad, Word, Excel, Evernote ...?\\

[mikeyww]

Retrieves the selected text in an Edit control.

Try it and see. Some controls might not be standard edit controls.

[surfactant]

Retrieves the selected text in an Edit control.

Try it and see. Some controls might not be standard edit controls.

I just tried to retrieve the control in my_Control in the code in my original post. Could you have a look at it? Thanks!

[mikeyww]

image220112-0119-001_cr.png (41.48 KiB) Viewed 5503 times

[surfactant]

Code: Select all

   ControlGetFocus, my_Control
   MsgBox % "my_Control = " . my_Control

In Evernote, this is what I get

[surfactant]

image220112-0119-001_cr.png

The code failed in Evernote.

[mikeyww]

As far as I know, it is not an edit control, but I have not experimented much with it. You may want to try Acc. https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=40590

My short test did not actually work with Acc, but I did not test it much. You could search the forum for Evernote, as there are some other posts about it.

[surfactant]

As far as I know, it is not an edit control, but I have not experimented much with it. You may want to try Acc. https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=40590

And it does not work in Chrome. Is there any solution? Thank you!

[mikeyww]

You could search the forum for Evernote. I do not use it. I believe that there are some posts about Evernote. Acc works in Chrome depending on the need; see the forum posts about Chrome-- lots of them.

[surfactant]

You could search the forum for Evernote. I do not use it. I believe that there are some posts about Evernote.

OK. Thank you!

[mikeyww]

There could be hundreds or thousands of AHK forum posts about Chrome-- would have a look.

[surfactant]

There could be hundreds or thousands of AHK forum posts about Chrome-- would have a look.

I would try to see. Thank you!

[swagfag]

u can straight up abandon the idea of having one solution that would work across any application universally. some applications use win32 controls, some do not. some implement MSAA/UIA fully, some implement accessibility features incorrectly, some dont even bother. for those, ure left with memory reading which is implemented on a case by case basis

the closest thing u can get to a universal solution, would be capturing the screen, isolating the selected text via img manipulation and OCRing the text. this, of course, limits u to what u can see on screen, and while there may be ways to retrieve the offscreen contents, surprise surprise, they arent universal. needless to say OCRing is also very error prone

[RussF]

Code: Select all

F3::
   clipboard := ""
   Sleep 100
   Send ^c
   ClipWait, 1
   my_Text := clipboard
   MsgBox % "my_Text = " . my_Text
return

Russ

[mikeyww]

I like that one! Save 100 ms by removing the sleep.

[RussF]

What's 100 ms among friends?
I grabbed that code from an existing script I had and I think I put that in because I had seen so many posts where the clipboard took a while to stabilize and people weren't gettin the results they expected. You can use ClipWait to determine when content goes INTO the clipboard, but it doesn't work to check it the clipboard is empty. Perhaps it's not necessary, but doesn't really slow me down too much.

Russ

[mikeyww]

If clipboard is empty, then ErrorLevel is set. ClipWait does the sleep for you. The benefit is that there is no minimum amount of time needed.

[surfactant]

@swagfag @RussF @mikeyww Thank you all for your comments!

Yes I currently use the solution based on clipboard. But as suggested in your comments, sometimes it seems to be tricky to get the clipboard work exactly expected. And I hoped that the clipboard would be kept unaffected by the script.

@swagfag "u can straight up abandon the idea of having one solution". Yes, let me forget it.