Recording Information in Windows Message Boxes

Have you ever taken a screen shot of a message box so that you could transcribe a long error message? Have you kept the message box open so you could write it down?

Here's a much easier and error-free method.

Simply copy the message box to the clipboard using Ctrl + C (i.e., hold down the Ctrl and C keys simultaneously). (Make sure the message box is the active window.) Then paste it into Notepad or other editor or document.



The message box shown above will look like this when pasted from the clipboard:

---------------------------
ODBC Error
---------------------------
Complicated ODBC error message.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

Update: this post has been re-published on my programming blog, Code Cache.