Keyboard simulator

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I sometimes copy and paste passwords from a password manager. There is one site which for some reason will not accept a pasted password. Does anyone know of a free program which will simulate entering the password from the keyboard to get around this?

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I have seen cases where a right-click doesn’t bring up a paste option, but the keyboard equivalent (CTRL-V) does the job.

HTH Regards,

Phil

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Thanks for the suggestion Phil. I guess I wasn’t detailed enough in the description of the issue. On this one site the paste seems to work. When I Ctrl-V it does seem to paste into the field as it fills with asterisks, but in some way the site seems to detect that it has been pasted and not typed from the keyboard and it rejects the password.

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When you paste the password try pushing the space bar and then backspace. Sometimes, that will be enough for the site to think the password has been typed.

--Joe

1 user thanked author for this post.

wavy

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Good idea but it didn’t work. Interestingly the password field has a reveal and clicking it shows the correct password in place, but it won’t accept it.  This is certainly not a major problem, but it would be interesting to know if others have he same problem. The site is http://mymedicare.gov, which I assume others of us old folks are using. Anyone else seeing the same thing?

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WSIHipschman wrote:

Does anyone know of a free program which will simulate entering the password from the keyboard to get around this?

I use AutoHotkey for this all the time.

For example, this one-liner in my always-on ‘helper’ script enters a complex password I cannot paste, have no chance of remembering and LastPass is unable to Auto-Fill on a particular site:

:*:~~::_Yo-]]y4ClrFY}TQfVoC

In English, this simply means ‘if 2 tilde characters are typed consecutively then backspace over both immediately and, instead, enter the characters following the second double colon‘.

(The double colon characters (::) denote ‘explicit’ parameters and the star (*) character between the first double colon means ‘immediately’, rather than wait for  a SPACE or RETURN/ENTER key.)

I have another one-liner based on @@ (i.e. two consecutive @ characters) that auto-inserts my very long email address to both save time and prevent any mistakes.

This method works for me because I run an AutoHotkey ‘helper’ script at every logon. The script includes code to auto-correct many of my regular fat-fingered typos, remap the scroll wheel to a DELETE key when pressed (to save me reaching forward on the keyboard), to auto-expand abbreviations (like hth to Hope this helps…), to automatically copy screenshots and resize them to a consistent height within PaintShop Pro and lots more time-savers.

Hope this helps…

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wavy, Phil F

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Rick Corbett wrote:

to auto-expand abbreviations (like hth to Hope this helps…),

Rick, what method did you use to type the unmodified ‘hth’, without immediately expanding?

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anonymous wrote:

what method did you use to type the unmodified ‘hth’, without immediately expanding?

It happens… very occasionally my ‘auto-replacers’ trip me up, usually when I write about them.

For example, when adding the info about using two consecutive @ characters (in previous post) to trigger a scripted action.

To answer your explicit question, when I would like to type hth and *not* have it auto-expanded to Hope this helps…  then, for simplicity’s sake, I would just type ht h (i.e. ht<SPACE>h) like I had to when posting my previous reply.

This is an obvious kludge but I didn’t want to add popups like ‘Are you sure?’ whenever my always-running AHK script encountered one of my ‘auto-expand’ strings.

PS – Jack Dunning’s blog (and book… which I bought) has what I consider to be the most authorative info about AutoHotkey Hotstrings.)

Hope this helps…

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IMO, anything you do more than once is a prime candidate for automation.

Depending on what browser is being used, the following two Jack Dunning blog entries may be helpful:

Automating Web Pages with AutoHotkey

Waiting for a Web Page to Load into a Browser (AutoHotkey Tips) – .

Two things I like about Jack’s blog is that 1) he doesn’t assume any knowledge by his readers and 2) he explains his reasoning for every line of AutoHotkey code he creates (including any mistakes he has made).

I’ve also found him to be very helpful when I’ve commented on any of his blog entries.

Hope this helps…

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