Very often text in the monitor's screen can be printed, tranferred to
Paint or word pad, but cannot be tranferred to notepad by highlighting
(passing the mouse over it), pressing Ctrl-c, going to Notepad and
pressing Ctrl-v. This is the case with the list of URL's popping up
when clicking on the down arrow to the right of the current URL, and
also with many displays of the internet.

The only way I know how to transfer these to notepad would be to print
them, scan the printed page, and using OCR. This is very tedious and
OCR is very unreliable. There must be a better way. Does anybody know
how?

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Request for Question Clarification by gregaw-ga on 26 Jul 2006 06:15 PDT

Whatever you copy to the clipboard (using ctrl-c or another method)
will past into notepad as long as it contains text.  Using the PrtScn
key copies your screen as an image.  But you knew that already.

The problem with many things on the internet is that they are
displayed as images because it makes formatting easier.  Different
screen resolution or browser settings can't mess up your text.  The
list of recently visited pages in IE is stored in the registry at this
location:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\TypedURLs

The quickest way to get the text out of this is to do an export of the
key from the registry.  Here is how to do that.
http://www.winguides.com/article.php?id=1&page=4&guide=registry

The resulting .reg file opens by default in Notepad.  The file looks like this:

**************************************************************
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\TypedURLs]
"url2"="http://finance.google.com/"
"url4"="http://dell.com/"
"url5"="http://ebay.com/"
"url10"="http://www.huduser.org/"
"url11"="http://midnatbank.com/"
"url12"="awa.com"
"url13"="http://americanwest.com/"
"url15"="http://hp.com/"
"url16"="http://microsoft.com/"
"url17"="http://weather.com/"
"url19"="http://dnsstuff.com/"
"url20"="http://google.com/"
"url21"="http://gmail.com/"
"url22"="://www.google.com/"
"url23"="http://nextel.com/"
**************************************************************

Let me know if this is what you were looking for.

Thanks!

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Clarification of Question by vaac-ga on 27 Jul 2006 19:31 PDT

If your "request for claidicaion" is supposed to instruct me how to
get the URL's I would not know how to use it. I cannot find a
directory "[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet
Explorer\TypedURLs]" and also there are other items which I cannot
tranfer to notepad. How do I copy these items to the clipboard? You
say "(using ctrl-c or another method)"; what other method exists to
copy to the clipboard?

---

Request for Question Clarification by gregaw-ga on 28 Jul 2006 05:35 PDT

"[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\TypedURLs]"

This is a registry key, not a folder.  For more information on how to
use the registry take look at this page:
http://www.helpdesk.umd.edu/topics/troubleshooting/os/windows_2000/555/

"Other methods" would be highlighting and the using the "Edit" menu
and "Copy" from the toolbar at the top of your window, or
right-clicking and selecting "copy".  They all do the same thing.

The reason you can't select some things to copy is because they are
not being displayed as text.  Exporting from the registry is one way
to get that particular list of URL's displayed as text that could then
be copied.  Anything that is stored in the registry this way could be
handled the same way.  I'm not sure what other things you have trouble
copying, but if they are images and not text there is not good way to
copy them to notepad.

---

Clarification of Question by vaac-ga on 31 Jul 2006 20:20 PDT

Thank you, Gegaw-ga for the clarification, and thank all others for
their comments. However it seems that familiarizing myself with- and
using the methods suggested will require much more time than I can
spare now. I will therefore accept this answer as it is and not pursue
the matter further.

Hi vaac.  I am not too sure of why you would want to use Notepad,
however I believe I can answer your question.  Too bad I am not a
researcher!  Anyway, here are your options:

1.  If you just want to move text to Notepad, move it first to Word,
open Notepad, go back to Word, highlight the text, push Ctrl + C, go
back to Notepad, and push Ctrl + V.  The text should appear in Notepad
(however, there may be differences in Notepad among different Windows
operating systems, so this may not work for you).

2.  If you want to save the list of URLs or other stuff from the
Internet, I was not able to do it in Notepad (which is strictly text),
but you can do it in Word (which accepts pictures).  Likely you know
already how to do it, but if you don't, the steps are:
    a)  Click to see the list of URLs
    b)  Press "Prt Scr" or Alt + "Prt Scr" (this last in some Windows
versions can actually just pick up one panel out of the whole Internet
screen).
    c)  Go to Word and press Ctrl V.
    d)  Voila'.  You may need to crop the picture to select out the
pieces of the Internet window that you are not interested in, and you
may need to enlarge the picture to be able to read it.  The best
option is to use a landscape format for the receiving Word page.
    e)  Note that the Print Screen key only copies what actually is
shown on the screen at that moment.  You may have to scroll down your
Internet window and repeat the process for something that does not fit
in one screen.
    f)  If you intend to put text or other pictures before or after or
around the picture, it may become a bit tricky, since unless you know
how to do it,  pictures tend to jump around, disapeear, etc.

I hope this does help.  Cheers

ghost

P.S.  I just tried something else for copying the text to Notepad, and
it works!  This replaces option 1 on my previous comment.

The trick seems to be to open Notepad first, then highlight the text
you want on the Internet, do Ctrl + C, go back to Notepad, and do Ctrl
+ V.  It worked for me!  Hope it does for you.  However, please note
that I am unable on my computer to highlight the list of URLs. In any
case, they contain graphics (the little icon at the front), so I am
sure they could not be copied to Notepad.  In any case, good luck.

ghost

Another change.  Please read "WordPad" everytime I say "Word" above.

Hi.  I would add a note to gregaw's request for clarification.  In my
computer (which has a very old version of Windows), the clipboard
content cannot be pasted to Notepad unless Notepad itself is opened
BEFORE the text is added to the clipboard (Ctrl + C).  Only then you
can paste it to Notepad.  Cheers

ghost