Originally Posted By: K447
Are there not Windows utilities that could provide the same or very similar keyboard macro (text expansion) functionality in software?
In a word: No.

There are solutions that can be coerced into performing the same functions, but are so cumbersome to use that, for my purposes, they are not usable.

To set up a macro with my keyboard, I press the Macro key to enter macro mode, I press the key in which to store the macro, I type the macro, then press the Macro key to end recording. That's three keystrokes in addition to the macro itself. To run the macro, I press whatever key I used to store the macro.

The solutions I have seen involve taking the mouse to click an icon that starts the macro creation program, wait while the macro screen comes up, type in the name of the macro and what directory you wish to save it in, type the macro, save the macro, then exit the macro creation program. To run the macro, call up the macro program, scroll through a list of saved macros, select the one you want to run, then run it and finally exit the macro program. It just isn't the sort of thing I would bother with to, for instance, add a short text string to six selected cells in an Excel spreadsheet.

tanstaafl.
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