Need extension or Windows app to copy highlighted text and paste

May 8, 2019 9:28 AM

I would like the ability when browsing online web pages and documents to highlight any amount of text, then quickly and simply copy it to some sort of text document, return the focus back to the web page and repeat, each time pasting to the same document. I use Windows and Chrome.

The goal is to make a reference note from one or more web pages by selecting chosen passages which I can save and then edit. Formatting is not a requirement. The ability to work with online pdfs would be useful. Saving to the same note each time is a must.

So I envision going to a web page, highlighting a passage, right clicking or "pressing" a button or hitting a particular key combination which then copies the text to Windows Notepad, or Evernote, or some other product. Then the focus is automatically returned to the web page where I can quickly repeat the process. Using as few key strokes as possible.

I'm currently searching through Google extensions and Evernote add ons for this but the going is slow!

Any ideas?

posted by Rad_Boy to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

How about just selecting the entire content of your web page, pasting it into your editor of choice, then selecting and -deleting- the parts you don't want?
posted by Seboshin at 9:47 AM on May 8, 2019

Do I understand that you wish to highlight text in a document and have it automatically copied into a second "notes" document without manually changing focus to the "notes" doc and pasting the text there?
posted by tman99 at 10:20 AM on May 8, 2019

The Vivaldi Browser had a feature allowing you to select and copy/add text to a note. you can also type comments in the note
posted by tman99 at 10:29 AM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]

I think you might end up with a multi step process for setting this up. An example would be that I use a browser bookmarklet to bookmark the page I am on in Pinboard. If I have text highlighted at the time, it includes the text as a note in the bookmark. Once I hit the save button on the Pinboard webpage, it brings me back to the webpage I was on when I ran the script. I also use IFTTT and one thing you can use as inputs in your recipes there is a Pinboard bookmark. In theory, you could create the bookmark using the bookmarklet and then have each new bookmark appended to a file using IFTTT.
posted by soelo at 11:34 AM on May 8, 2019

1. Select desired text in the browser
2. Hit Ctrl + C
3. Hold down Alt and then hit Tab several times to get to Notepad (after the first time you will be able to hit Alt + Tab)
4. Hit Ctrl + V
5. Hit Alt + Tab
6. Repeat

posted by gregr at 12:55 PM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]

What gregr said, with the additional step that you have to open Notepad (or Wordpad) before you can go to or paste into it. Notepad and Wordpad are in the Accessories folder in All Programs behind the Windows button.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 2:11 PM on May 8, 2019

Came to suggest the Vivaldi browser also. To save multiple bits to the same note you’d need to copy and paste, if I remember right (I don’t use the feature a lot), but it’s better than switching to another program entirely. Optional additional step to, once you’re done composing the note, copy and paste the whole thing to elsewhere.

Alternatively, also using Vivaldi: open Evernote web in one tab, your source webpage in another. Drag one tab onto the other to stack them. Right click on tab stack, tile tab stack. Now you have a split window with Evernote on one half and your source on the other. Copy and paste across.
posted by sailoreagle at 2:51 PM on May 8, 2019

I'm going to turn the question on its head a bit and recommend that you get a clipboard manager. I personally use Ditto but there are other options out there. With a clipboard manager, it watches your clipboard for changes and saves a history of whatever you've copied, so you can do all of the copying in one go, and then use the clipboard manager to paste everything back in one go.
posted by Aleyn at 8:58 PM on May 8, 2019

I'd suggest checking out SwiftKey. A little confusing to set up at first, but it's pretty helpful for repetitive tasks like this.
posted by Orrorin at 4:36 PM on May 11, 2019