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Using QuickTextPaste. Enter the text you want to a hotkey for in the ‘Text’ pane, write a short menu text and then select a shortcut key. You can now paste this text whenever and wherever. If you want to create a shortcut for a command, type- run: “command”.exe.

Life is full of little annoyances, many of which we can do little about but grin and bear it. But that doesn't mean we have to put up with these little annoyances from our computer applications. For example, Microsoft Word 2003 has this annoying little habit of flipping to the overtype mode while we are not looking. This is caused by an inadvertent touch of the Insert key on our keyboards. The functionality is a hold-over from the mainframe/terminal era of computing and is not really necessary for personal computers. This TechRepublic How do I.. shows you two ways to turn off the Insert key overtype functionality in Word and goes on to suggest a compromise that will make the situation less annoying but allow you to toggle the overtype mode on and off if you wish.

Do you have an annoyance you would like to see a TechRepublic How do I.. blog post remove from your already tense life? We'd be happy to do it; just let us know what it is in the discussion thread to this post. Be sure to let us know what you wish the application in question did instead of the annoying thing it does now and if it is possible, we will write up a solution for you. Better yet, if you have solved an annoyance, please share it with us and, assuming it solves a common annoyance, I'll make it worth your time and effort.

Turn it off

The first method for turning off the Insert key overtype function comes from the Web site annoyances.org. The method uses the Word macro language to circumvent the normal operation of the Insert key, which is a little heavy-handed, but it definitely works. Navigate the Word menus to start a macro recording by clicking Tools Macros Record New Macro. You should see the screen shown in Figure A.

Figure A

Record new macro

Change the name of the new macro to something like 'DoesNothing' and then click the Keyboard button. Click the cursor in the Press New Shortcut Key box and press the Insert key (Figure B). Click the Assign button and then click the Stop Recording button to stop and save the macro.

Figure B

DoesNothing

Now when you press the Insert key, it does nothing.

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Another way

You don't have to record a new macro to turn off the Insert key overtype functionality in Word; you can merely change the keyboard shortcut associated with the Insert key. Right-click on an empty part of a Word toolbar and then click the Customize menu item to reach the screen shown in Figure C.

Figure C

Customize

Click on the Commands tab and then click the Keyboard button to reach the screen shown in Figure D.

Figure D

Keyboard shortcuts

In the Categories list box, choose All Commands. Then, in the Commands list box, choose Overtype. Note that the current keyboard shortcut is the Insert key. Click Insert in the Current Keys box and then click the Remove button. There you go — no more inadvertent toggle of the overtype mode is possible because there is no keyboard shortcut anymore.

A compromise

There is, of course, another option to consider. There may come a time when you want to toggle on overtype mode in Word. With the previous two methods, you will have to reverse the process to retrieve the functionality. A better idea might be to change the associated keyboard shortcut to something that is much less likely for you to inadvertently type. So instead of removing the keyboard shortcut, you change it to something like Ctrl+Shift+Insert, as shown in Figure E. Just click the Assign button and now you can avoid the inadvertent overtype but still have access to that feature when you want it. Thus, you are removing one annoyance without creating a new annoyance later.

Figure E

A new keyboard shortcut

You may be wondering about Word 2007. Apparently, Microsoft got the message that the Insert key toggle for overtype was annoying and changed the default in 2007. The Insert mode is off.

You could create this using AppleScript and run it using Automator. Create a script: tell application 'System Events' to keystroke 'Hello World.' Replace 'Hello World.' With your desired text, but make sure to keep the quotation marks around whatever text you input as that is what is making the data type a string. Next, use Automator to trigger the above AppleScript:.

Open Automator. Create a new services workflow.

Set Service Recieves to no input. Set in to any application. Under 'Actions' in the left pane, search for 'Run AppleScript.'

. Once you find that, drag 'Run AppleScript' over to the right pane, which enters it into your workflow.

Save the workflow. Finally, use System Preferences to assign this workflow to a global hotkey. Open System Preferences. Click Keyboard. Click Keyboard Shortcuts. Scroll down to and select Services in the left pane.

In the right pane, search for the name of the Automator workflow that you just saved and click on the checkbox to the left of the file name. Hold down your desired keyboard shortcut and it will automatically assign this workflow to your selected hotkeys. This is probably the easiest way of accomplishing your desired task while writing the least amount of code as possible. There is also a tool called Alfred that is outstanding; I use it many times on a daily basis. At this point I would probably be lost without it. It can completely take over spotlight for you (in fact I deleted the hotkey to bring up spotlight search (cmd + space) and assigned that hotkey to open Alfred instead.

Within Alfred you can do things such as copy text from one place, then copy more text from somewhere else and append them together, do anything that you can do in Spotlight search, plus much, much more. The reason that I bring up Alfred is because you can create this same exact workflow within Alfred and assign it to a system wide hotkey all within the same application without writing and code at all (if you consider the example that I just gave to actually be writing code). In fact, the types of workflows you can create in Alfred is essentially limitless and there are even already built recipes online, for different applications that you can download.