My Survey Miracle

[oldbuddy]

Rather than complain about the thousands of surveys that I have taken without this miracle coming to light, I am just thrilled that I finally found it.     

I recently shared how happy I was to find voice recognition in my Windows 10, so I can save my Arthritic fingers from suffering through all the survey I take, but my most recent discovery overshadows that by far.

AutoHotKey is a Script utility that has been around forever, but I never knew it. It does way more than what I need, but yesterday I installed it very simply, wrote up a custom script in my text editor and ran it just before I start taking surveys this morning.

Now when a survey asks for my age I simply type control a, or for my zip code control Z and even more exciting to me is when one of those text boxes comes up that tells me to fill in two or three sentence to answer the question, I have a list of simple short codes I can type in, to fill a whole paragraph in a second, such as   >fc to tell about my favorite car, or >mv to share my favorite movie.

For those who think this may be too technical, here is a short example of the script I used today;

;~~~~~~ My Survey Script ~~~~~

^a::
Send, 81 ;My Age
return

^z::
Send, 97224 ;My Zip
return

::>fc:: This is my canned response that will be filled in when I type the code into the text box and can be as long as I want it to be.

~~~~~~~~~~~
Once I save the script (survey.ahk) all I do is right click on it and select Run Script.
I leave my text editor open while I work so I can make updates, save them and run the script again very quickly.

I admit that I spent half a day to learn about this, but I just saved you most of that time right here.

Have Fun!

[rwhite17]

thanks, oldbuddy... I have seen programs like that but autofill on my browser usually does that for me and I also have txt files that I copy and paste into the boxes.... maybe not as easy as your program, but also not another thing downloaded/running in the background... but whatever works best is what we should use

[pkrahmer]

sounds promising!
i have to look into it.
Thanks for sharing!

[tuffys_daughtr]

Interesting oldbuddy! Sounds like it's very helpful to you. I use my autofill and find it very helpful at times also. I don't mind the typing too much, most of the time it's my brain that can't think straight that is the problem, haha. Like for open ended questions, ugh, sometimes I really don't have a clue as to what to put in those. The other day I had one that asked what a perfect day for me would be, and why. I put in my "reality" response, but in another life, it'd be being wealthy and not having to worry about money all the time! Oh how nice that'd be!!

[oldbuddy]

thanks, oldbuddy... I have seen programs like that but autofill on my browser usually does that for me and I also have txt files that I copy and paste into the boxes.... maybe not as easy as your program, but also not another thing downloaded/running in the background... but whatever works best is what we should use

I used to use txt files to copy and paste, but this has all my survey answers in one txt file and instead of copy and paste, I just enter a shortcode. The AutoHotKey program is only 2 Mb (about the same as Notepad) and uses zero background processing time while waiting to be used.

[arobinson1331]

I'm happy that you figured this out for yourself! Gotta make sure you preserve those hands of yours ) 

[rwhite17]

I'll look into it then, oldbuddy , and see how it is... thanks for the info

[pstovall]

Good for you oldbuddy!  I never cease to be impressed with your expertise. You are right!  I think it's too technical for me, but for those of you who understand it, go for it and enjoy the shortcut!

[oldbuddy]

Good for you oldbuddy!  I never cease to be impressed with your expertise. You are right!  I think it's too technical for me, but for those of you who understand it, go for it and enjoy the shortcut!

You just convinced me I should do a video to show it is not technical at all and anyone who can submit a comment here could learn to do it in a few minutes.

[JoyinJ]

Interesting.  Thanks very much.

[berthabutt]

                   While your post is impressive about saving typing time because I am a slow typer,  it also sounds very technical to me also and way over my head.  If you do post a video on how to do this, oldbuddy, I would love to give it a shot.

[oldbuddy]

I did the video, but I don't want to post it here. If you Google my username (oldbuddy) you can find my info and I put the video on the ezstart page.

[heypeg]

wow that's very interesting.

[singletonb]

thanks for the useful info.  I will have to check it out

[annemillersworld]

I did the video, but I don't want to post it here. If you Google my username (oldbuddy) you can find my info and I put the video on the ezstart page.

Thanks for another great informative video.  You make it look easy.