Not a day passes by without seeing one of those sweet error messages in Windows. They can appear for a variety of reasons, which are usually explained in the message box itself – sometimes including strange numbers and error codes. So, what if you need to copy that text somewhere else, like in a Customer Support form or a chat window? Do you really have to type the whole thing by yourself?
The answer is no. In case you didn’t now, you can copy the text inside Windows error message boxes exactly the same way you copy any other text to the clipboard: with the Ctrl+C shortcut. See it for yourself: open the Start menu and click on Run. Then type anything (your name, for example) inside the text field and press Enter. When Windows displays an error message, press Ctrl+C to copy the text and then paste it in a text file. It’ll be something like this:
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elena
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Windows cannot find 'elena'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. To search for a file, click the Start button, and then click Search.
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OK
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Be aware that this trick works only with Windows errors, that is, those message boxes displayed by the system. If you need to copy an error message coming from a given application, there’s another way round it. It’s called Kleptomania and it’s a tool that enables you to copy any text inside any message box, regardless of its source. The program uses the OCR technology to read text and saves it as text or as image.
