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Summary: Windows error messages can often be quickly and easily copied to the clipboard with a single keystroke. Can I avoid retyping error messages when I need to report them? In short: yes, sometimes. Microsoft points out how in one of the shortest Knowledgebase articles I've ever seen. And as short as it is the article even manages to include an error! As of Windows 2000 and in it's successor Windows XP, if you're presented with an error message, press CTRL+C. You'll hear a beep but there's a good chance the message just got copied to the clipboard. Fire up notepad and hit paste. If you get the message box text then the the function is supported for that message. •
I generated the message box above by trying to Start->Run a program that doesn't exist. Pressing control+c put the following in the clipboard: --------------------------- notfound.exe --------------------------- Windows cannot find 'notfound.exe'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. To search for a file, click the Start button, and then click Search. --------------------------- OK --------------------------- How do you know which messages this works with? Yes, there's the rub. You don't. It's generally a matter of try it and see. Applications that use the system default message box fuctionality get the copy-to-clipboard feature for free. Applications that create their own error message reporting dialog - even if it looks like the standard box - may or may not include the functionality. Oh, and the error in Microsoft's knowledgebase article? It reads: "paste to the clipboard" which should obviously read "copy to the clipboard". "Paste" is what you do when you place the contents of the clipboard into a document. Article 128 | Posted December 16, 2003 |
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Another method is to hit the 'PrtScrn' button on the keyboard and paste the graphic of the screen into 'MS Word' or other capable app. This should work for all error messages.
You could also hit 'Alt+PrtScrn' but this means the error box has to be the active window so I don't usually use it.
Posted by: Bob Jones at December 28, 2003 11:27 AMI tend to shy away from that if possible since not everyone wants to receive a graphic - depending on what application you past it into, or how your emailer handles graphics it can get quite large. If copying the text works, it's MUCH smaller, faster, easier to deal with. However you're absolutely correct, when CTRL+C doesn't have the desired effect, then taking a screen shot is the next best thing. I tend to past into a graphics editor like PaintShop, and crop it down to only the message box in question, and then save as a .jpg - again, making it as small as is reasonable.
Leo
Posted by: Leo at December 28, 2003 12:21 PM> Applications that use the system default
> message box fuctionality get the copy-to-
> clipboard feature for free.
For some reason I thought that too. My application calls the MFC method CWnd::MessageBox, and I told my boss that Ctrl+C could be pressed to get a copy of the text. My boss showed me that I lied, and I had the joy of confirming that I lied. That's what we get for using Windows XP (which the Knowledge Base article doesn't mention) or for using Windows standard methods.
Posted by: Norman Diamond at December 20, 2005 8:30 PMActually in this case I would blame MFC, which is a library on top of the Windows API.
Posted by: Leo at December 20, 2005 8:32 PMI prefer to use Paint, for 3 reasons:
1) It's very simple to load and use,
2) It's a basic application w/ Windows.
and 3)Paint saves as .bmp files, (and at lower resolutions, typically), so the files tend to be smaller.
Posted by: Sam Kester at January 23, 2006 10:20 AMIt's amazing! Each time I receive one of your "Ask Leo"'s and hope to quickly download,
say, 1 out of 10 items, I wind up reading and downloading all 10. Each always has something
new and useful.
Just a few comments and a query:
1. Looks like MS has already disabled the link
to the message you found an error in.
2. I would love to know of a small program that
could replace bulky "Word" for pasting in those
occasional 'screen prints'. For the moment, as
your reader points out, though, 'Paint' will
have to do.
3. Can you possibly help with this one:
(it's indirectly related to topic)
How do you stop a "Save web page" in progress when it justs sits there at 0%, for hours on
end - without crashing all your open programs,
websites, etc., via stopping the process?
In the last decade or so, using at least 3 different Win versions, pressing the "X"
or "cancel" keys (umpteen thousand times) worked
maybe once or twice.
What sense is there in having the 'X' and 'cancel' tabs in a message box if they
never or hardly ever work?
That's like false advertizing. Period. If it
never works, it has no business being there.
I'll retract that, if Im the only one in the universe with that problem.
Jed...
Posted by: Jed Timmer at July 10, 2006 4:45 AM1. Works for me :-)
Posted by: Leo A. Notenboom at July 10, 2006 9:36 AM2. For text (as per this article): notepad, for images: paint.
3. I'm sure you're not the only one, but there are different "stages" (for lack of a better word) to a Save operation - some that can easily be interrupted, and some that cannot. Clearly you're getting hung up at the later, and killing IE might be the only approach.
I got an error messsage beginning with "Microsoft Excel has encounted a problem and needs to close...." I am sure you've seen it. It wants my permission to send an error report and has a link to view the contents of the error report. The next window is titled "Error Report Contents" and has 2 text display areas. The top one contains information about the process that will be reported. This is the area I wanted to copy and I tried ctrl+c which often works where right-click>copy is disabled. I could not copy or even highlight (ctrl+a) the text. The mouse cursor would not switch to text select mode except in the lower window which is for files to be included in the error report. The upper window has a huge amount of data in it; 15 lines of text per window (one window contains approx one module's data) and at module 117 the thread data started in hex code, this was not even a tenth of the scroll bar's remaing range....EEEEK!
Posted by: Alex at September 22, 2006 7:31 PMIt is rare that I can't find some way to copy but this is one. Since I just now learned another technique from your article, I thought maybe I should ask.
I am also looking for a solution to alex's problem... I think I'll give up for now.
Posted by: aaron at December 5, 2006 7:02 AMSame question as Alex and Aaron - I would imagine this is saved as a text file or something somewhere... sure would be nice to know where.
Posted by: Ben at December 27, 2006 7:57 AM