I meant to talk about this in my post about how I use Google Translate to access information in foreign-language records, but I forgot to actually write about it by the end of the post.
@Savanna you just made my WEEK, and it’s only Sunday 😉
Seriously, this hack is going to save me so much time! Like you, a lot of my research leads to PDFs and other non-copy-able formats, which I end up typing in, errors and all.
Even easier is using Microsoft’s PowerToys Ctrl + shift + T, drag the box around the type area and that’s it - the text is already in your clipboard. Just ctrl V
I have been doing something similar. Instead of using translate, I just upload (drag & drop) the snipped image to Google or Bing's image search. Both will then give you an option to view the text on the image. You can just cut & paste from there. Really similar to your method but saves the extra step of choosing what language you want it translated to. This has come in handy so often. Now it if will only start recognizing handwriting this well too!
Claude (the AI) used to be pretty good at reading handwriting as long as it was reasonably neat. I used to use it to get an idea of whether I would care enough about the content to do a full translation myself or not and sort of triage things to save time. However, they seem to have nerfed it in recent updates because it can’t do it anymore at all, just spits out utter nonsense / hallucinates whatever. Luckily I can read enough of the languages I ask it to translate that I knew immediately it was hallucinating. I’m really disappointed they made it worse in that way though haha
@Savanna, thank you so much for sharing this! Mind blown, runs off to spend the rest of the day using this for sooooo many citation text-pasteing tasks! You're my favorite genearockstar of the day!
@Savanna you just made my WEEK, and it’s only Sunday 😉
Seriously, this hack is going to save me so much time! Like you, a lot of my research leads to PDFs and other non-copy-able formats, which I end up typing in, errors and all.
Thanks!
Good info. Thanks. On the Mac it's Command Shift 4
Even easier is using Microsoft’s PowerToys Ctrl + shift + T, drag the box around the type area and that’s it - the text is already in your clipboard. Just ctrl V
Oh, now I'm running to my computer to give it a try. Is there a specific tool in PowerToys that needs to be enabled?
I'm pretty sure it's Text Extractor (and the correct shortcut is ALT + Shift + T --- note Alt not Ctrl.)
It’s timesavers like these that make a huge difference!
I have been doing something similar. Instead of using translate, I just upload (drag & drop) the snipped image to Google or Bing's image search. Both will then give you an option to view the text on the image. You can just cut & paste from there. Really similar to your method but saves the extra step of choosing what language you want it translated to. This has come in handy so often. Now it if will only start recognizing handwriting this well too!
Claude (the AI) used to be pretty good at reading handwriting as long as it was reasonably neat. I used to use it to get an idea of whether I would care enough about the content to do a full translation myself or not and sort of triage things to save time. However, they seem to have nerfed it in recent updates because it can’t do it anymore at all, just spits out utter nonsense / hallucinates whatever. Luckily I can read enough of the languages I ask it to translate that I knew immediately it was hallucinating. I’m really disappointed they made it worse in that way though haha
Bummer about the Claude change. I did read that Gemini3 is pretty good now (See: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2025/11/handwriting-recognition-ancestrycom-and.html). Of course, I'm not sure I'm entirely sold on using LLMs for much of anything.
Thank you for this reminder. I just started using the PRTSCRN for work and this is the same idea and I keep forgetting about using it. T
Great tip! Thank you!
Real time saver. I have done this in google keep using the grab image text feature but this seems faster!
That’s what I use too
@Savanna, thank you so much for sharing this! Mind blown, runs off to spend the rest of the day using this for sooooo many citation text-pasteing tasks! You're my favorite genearockstar of the day!
You had me at "easily copy."
Wow! Good to know!
I'm pretty sure it's Text Extractor (and the correct shortcut is ALT + Shift + T --- note Alt not Ctrl.)