Simplest technique to collect text from websites into a program/single document?

Question

I'm having trouble finding an efficient way to gather info I find while researching a particular topic on the web. First, I used to hightlight pieces of information and paste into Word but that wasted a lot of time since I have to click on Word; paste; close etcetera.

Then I looked into Onenote and Evernote. Well, I can just right-click and save the whole page or bits to Evernote. But every new bit I collect saves in a new document. So, I end up having lots of documents with one-liners. Does Evernote have a way to correct this?

What I'm looking for is a method/software which allows me to collect selected lines of text from a webpage in a streamlined way. I don't want to have to open and paste every time I want to save something. Also, I need a program that allows me to gather info in the same single document for the whole session of reasearch on one particular topic.

Any tips, programs or methods?

Answer 1

Basically you have two ways of easily collecting text to the same file.

Use a scripting program like AutoHotkey

In order to collect text, I started out with a simple AutoHotkey script. AutoHotkey is an amazing tool. Just put a bit of effort in learning the basics and you will be able to make your computer work a lot easier. The main point of using AutoHotkey for most users is creating hotkeys for common tasks. Here's an example for a hotkey that will copy the selected text and paste it at the end of the file mynotes.txt without opening it.

^+c:: ; Control-Shift-C as a hotkey
Sendinput ^c ; copy selection, mimicks control-c
Sleep 1000 ; wait 1 second until clipboard is full, use at least 300
FileAppend, `n`n%clipboard%, C:\folder\mynotes.txt ; Add clipboard content to the end of a text file. Insert 2 new lines before inserting the clipboard with `n`n
Return

This works very reliably. Save the code above in an ahk file and place it in your startup folder. This way it will run when you boot your computer. Realize that you have to change the file path from C:\folder\mynotes.txt to the path where you will want to save your file. Vary the file path according to your own needs.

If need be, you can expand the AutoHotkey script to include a time stamp and/or the website the text was copied from (making it similar to Evernote). If you want to know how to do that, I suggest you read up on AutoHotkey basics

For would-be users of AutoHotkey I recommend reading this tutorial over at eHow: http://www.ehow.com/how_8506399_can-keyboard-do-repeatable-tasks.html

Use a ready made app like ClipTrap

And one more thing: I've just remembered a small freeware tool that does something very similar. It's called ClipTrap and it is for Windows: http://skwire.dcmembers.com/fp/?page=cliptrap. There are no configuration options, though. And it does not save any formatting (like HTML or RTF), though the AutoHotkey script does not either.

Answer 2

I don't know of anything for IE, but in Firefox I use a plugin called Zotero. It's specifically designed as a research assistant. You can create notes in it and paste right into it without having to tab out. If you're open to using a different browser, you might look into that.

Answer 3

Similar to @user99572_is_fine's answer, I wrote an AutoHotkey script:

Download:

http://ahk.igalvez.net/CopyToDoc.exe

MD5 checksum: ccddf19d1eb440660b074682c8e8de6c

---

Source:

!v::

WinGet, target, ID, A
WinGet, targetProcess, ProcessName, A
MsgBox The target window [%targetProcess% %target%] has been set.
return

!c::

if target =
{
    MsgBox,
    (LTrim
        The target window has not been set.
        Press Alt+V to select a window.
    )
    Exit
}

IfWinNotExist, ahk_id %target%
{
    MsgBox,
    (LTrim
        The target window [%targetProcess% %target%] was not found.
        Press Alt+V to select a new window.
    )
    Exit
}

WinGet, original, ID, A
SendInput ^c
Sleep 500
WinActivate, ahk_id %target%
SendInput ^{End}
SendInput {Enter 2}
SendInput %clipboard%
WinActivate, ahk_id %original%
return

---

Instructions:

1. Go to the window of the program you want to paste to.
2. Press Alt+V to set that window as the target window.
3. Go and select your desired text/data.
4. Press Alt+C to copy the data. The script will then open up the target window, paste the data at the end of the file, and then return you back to where you were.