It seems that meeting and event planners (me included) spend an awful lot of our time copying and pasting crap from place to place. Whether it is from the web to word, from word to Google, from a website to Google Maps or from excel to word you can hear the sound of clicks and grunts coming from our offices hundreds of times per day.
The typical copy and paste for me goes something like this:
- Highlight text on web
- Copy text from web (CTRL C)
- Open Notepad (you do drop all copied stuff into notepad before you paste it somewhere else right?)
- Paste into Notepad
- Highlight all
- Cut from Notepad
- Open Word or other program
- Paste whatever it was that I was working on (hoping I can even remember)
What if we could shorten the cycle, what if we could make the process a little easier?
Well, we can and it is not even difficult. There is a simple little tool that we can use that will do just that. What is this little slice of internet magic? What have the internet fairies decided to drop from the internet heavens to make our lives all sunshine and singing birds?
Click.To is a simple little thing that you download and install. Once you have done this, an entire world of speedy copying and pasting opens up to you. Now, instead of the usual copy, find notepad, paste, copy, open another program, plunk the text in its final place, you can now shorten the cycle as Click.To adds your favorite destinations right to the CTRL C or Right Click Copy Menu.
Here is how someone else describes it:
“Click.to turns copy, pasting and sharing or searching into a single action. This simple, little convenience could certainly save you a lot of time.”
Jennifer van Grove, www.mashable.com
Let’s say I wanted to copy some text from Wikipedia, let’s use the Clash as my text article because I was just reading that London Calling is the 8th greatest album of all time (oops, off track).
I opened the Wikipedia Clash Page and highlighted the first paragraph. When I clicked CTRL C (right clicking works too), I get options as to where I can send the copied material. I have picked some of my most used spots for use in my menu and you can choose from a whole host of options including Word, Outlook and more.
In my list you see, Google, Facebook, Amazon, EverNote, Notepad and StumbleUpon (as well as the “more options button”). My most often used would be Notepad because it strips all of the formatting from text making the transition to Word a little easier. FYI, you should also do the reverse and go from Word to Notepad before you copy back to the web.
Saving clicks add up to minutes, minutes add up to hours and so on and so on.
The Downside
Sometimes Click.To is a little annoying when you are simply copying and pasting text in the same document but what the heck, that is a small price to pay for saving hours over the course of a week. You get used to it and it is really not that annoying because you can ignore it and copy and paste as you used too.
Check out the little video:
