As a developer, I very often see error messages – some of those originate from the products I develop, and I have to report them as bugs. Whenever I get an error message in a dialog, I typically take a screenshot, and add that to the bug base issue. That’s fine, but it means people can’t search for that error message in the bug base – in order to enable that, I’d usually just manually type out the error message, rather than take a screenshot. That was before. Today, I’d just press CTRL+C to copy the error dialog contents.
That’s right, whenever you see a dialog in Windows, like this:
You can press CTRL+C to copy, and then open up Notepad, and press CTRL+V to paste:
I had no idea this was possible until I read a Lifehacker article explaining it. Since I’ve started using it, I’ve found it very useful in my every day work. Maybe you will too!
Just a note, though – it doesn’t seem to work everywhere. For example, JavaScript alert dialogs can’t be copied in Firefox, but they can in Internet Explorer.