Keyboard macro software

[IO540]

Hi,

For years I used to have an old Gateway keyboard which had programmable macros. Brilliant for answering business emails e.g. control-F1 would generate the standard "Please do not hesitate to contact us ....." all the way through the contact details on the bottom.

Eventually it failed and I have gone to the Logitech DiNovo which of course doesn't do any of this.

There is a ton of "keyboard macro" software out there.

I started with the free ones. The first half a dozen (not kidding) basically didn't work. Some would not pick up control-F-key combinations. One had weird bugs e.g. all generated strings had to begin with an uppercase letter!! I also have three machines with this keyboard; one running win2k and two running winXP, and one program stopped the XP machine from being shut down! One would not pick up any control or alt keys; only normal text strings would trigger it. One would drop characters; presumably it was generating the keyboard events too fast. This seems so stupid, as the requirement should be pretty obvious.

Then there is a pile of shareware around the £20-£40 mark, but I don't want to try half a dozen of those, with all the garbage which timed shareware leaves in the registry.

Can anyone recommend a program which "just works" to pick up control-F-key triggers and generates text strings which can be edited easily - either within the program or by editing a separate text file? And works under win2k and XP...

Many thanks in advance.

[Jofm5]

IO540,

If its only for your business email's check out the email software that your using as you can typically set up multiple signatures and you could have one set for each sort of reply you want to send and pick and choose at time of sending.....

Personally I have the Logitech G15 keyboard, although intended as a gaming keyboard it has 6 programmable buttons and 3 memory banks with quick buttons to switch between. Not much use to you I know but rather than pay for shareware etc it may be cheaper to pick one of these up.

Also some of the microsoft cordless keyboards give 5 macro buttons along with the media buttons up the top.

Cant help on the software front tho as dont use any...

Cheers

[IO540]

I tried Hotkeys - didn't work for some reason.

Good tip re email software; 2 issues: I need to drop in any of a dozen paragraphs in different places in an email, and also one cannot generally see email signatures.

[Mornington Crescent]

If you happen to be using Outlook 2007 there is a built in function called Quick Parts under the Insert tab which will do exactly what you want.
It may be in Outlook 2003 but can't check. - sorry.

Another way is to compose your emails in Word using the Macros available there - then copy and paste into your email prog.

[IO540]

I don't use any Micro$oft email software, so will have to keep looking for a macro program.

This is really odd... back in the days of MS-DOS we had loads of little utilities like this :)

[A A Gruntpuddock]

Rather low-tech I know but I have a text file with common tags, etc for when I upload photos or videos to Flickr or youtube.

Just keep it open then cut & paste. Not as convenient as macros but it works.

I used to use the macros in Excel many years ago but most of the functions were phased out when MS started pushing VisualBasic.

Not all changes are improvements.

[IO540]

Just an update:

Macro Express works brilliantly. Straight out of the box - had it configured in minutes.

Many thanks for the tip :ok: