GetWindowText for Windows read out the window text on all OS!

Get Window text is a very small Windows program with which you can read window texts and contents super easy!

Sometimes you need the text from various Windows error messages to send this error message or a certain window text content to someone via email. If a simple Windows screenshot is not enough, you are happy with this window text reading function. It does not require any C ++ programming skills or administrative IT expertise!

As a portable Windows application, you can easily use it on a USB stick on any Windows operating system and always have it with you, the x32 version also has support for x64 and x32 Microsoft’s Windows operating systems!

Key functions:

◆ Fast reading out of the window texts
◆ Optionally ready for use in the to-tray area
◆ Put the text to the windows clipboard
◆ Reading of list fields, selection boxes
◆ Reading of complete directory structures
. etc.

Other options and specifications

◆ Very small program
◆ Low CPU usage
◆ Low RAM requirements
◆ Optional translation function

The first start from the window Read text tool!

When you start the window on your PC for the first time, an instruction is immediately displayed on the screen. You can start reading window texts immediately. You can also use the clipboard button to move the read text directly to the Windows clipboard.

The user interface can be displayed in German or English. Of course, this has no influence on the function of the window text reading tool!

(Image-3) Query Windows texts from windows and put them on the clipboard!

How the window texts selection tool works on Windows!

The reading can be started by clicking the left mouse button on the button with GetWindowText Icon and holding down the left mouse button (drag).

Then simply hold the mouse over the window from which the text is to be read.

Almost all texts, such as those from Edit, Static, Groupbox — Controls, etc.
are read out. Directory trees (SysTreeView32) and list views (SysListView32) are also supported. The complete content is read out here.

The Reading will be stopped when the mouse button is released.

(Image-1) Query / read out Windows texts from windows!

The installation of the window text selection tool on Windows!

The practical window text reading tool on Windows does not need to be installed. Simply place it on the desktop or copy it to the USB stick for portable use. So you can read other computers or texts on the go. You can also pass it on to friends, relatives and acquaintances who are interested in benefiting from the window text selection tool on Windows forever.

See also: How can I remove or uninstall the Windows window text reading tool?

The use of window content reading tools!

Well suited for administrators and webmasters but the window content reading tool is also suitable for curious users and standard Windows users and Windows 10 beginners , or simply tested out of curiosity whether the window content reading tool works , since it does not require IT expertise, it is suitable for all Windows users.

# GetWindowText Versions History

New in version 4.01 // 2 February 2021 Small improvements and update the language file Testing and Verification for next Windows 10 Build

New in version 3.88 // 6 December 2020 Update of the language files in the get windows text tool General improvements New languages: Filipino and Malay Many thanks to Washington for the Malay language. Many thanks to A. Lincoln for the Filipino language.

New in version 3.81 // 9 September 2020 New language: Indonesian, Hindi and Hebrew General improvements in the GetWindowText Update of the language files Thanks to Indonesian Super-Girl for the Indonesian language. Thanks to The Hindi Man for the Hindi language. Thanks to DJ Israel for the Hebrew language.

New in version 3.77 // 19 August 2020 Improvements and adjustments GetWindowText for Windows 10 all versions Important update of the language files New language: Thai and Spanish (Venezuela) Thanks to Ricardo A. Rivas for the Spanish (Venezuela) language. Thanks to Chanchana for the Thai language.

New in version 3.71 // 24 July 2020 Small adjustments in GetWindowText for MS Server 2019 and 2016 Update of the GetWindowText language files

. complete Versions History

# GetWindowText is multilingual and a popular program worldwide:

Language	%	Translator Name
1	German / Deutsch	100 %	Nenad Hrg
2	English / Englisch	100 %	Nenad Hrg
3	Russian / Pусский	100 %	wvxwxvw, Valerij Romanovskij, Postavy
4	Italian / Italiano	100 %	bovirus e Valerio Russo
5	Danish / Dansk	83 %	Peder
6	Polish / Polski	87 %	Arkadiusz Albiniak
7	Brazilian / Portuguese	87 %	Helio
8	Spanish / Espaсol (Latinoamerican)	91 %	XD
9	Serbian / Cрпски	91 %	OZZII
10	Turkish / Tьrkзe	91 %	Tuna Aras
11	Czech / Českэ	91 %	Oldbrowser
12	Swedish / Svenska	100 %	Granberg
13	Greek / ελληνικά	91 %	George Axaroglou
14	Gujarati / ગુજરાતી	91 %	SarjanWebDev
15	Romanian / Romвnă	91 %	Jaff (Oprea Nicolae)
16	Chinese-Simplified / 简体 中文	91 %	renjx
17	Norwegian / Norsk	91 %	Odd A Johnsen
18	Traditional Chinese / 繁體中文	100 %	Zinno Tse
19	Japanese / 日本	95 %	TANIMOTO
20	Persian / فارسی	95 %	Sajjad Heidarpour
21	French / Franзais	100 %	Drake4478, Hervй Tanguy
22	Nederlands / Dutch	91 %	Louis van der Weide
23	Bulgarian / Български	95 %	N. Nedelev
24	Arabic / اللغة العربية	91 %	Mohmmad Ahmed
25	Hungarian / Magyar	100 %	DirektX
26	Korean / 한국어	100 %	VenusGirl ��
27	Chinese Traditional / 正體中文	100 %	Danfong Hsieh
28	Finnish / Suomi	100 %	Kimple
29	Vietnamese / Tiếng Việt (Việt Nam)	100 %	Việt Nam
30	Irish / United Kingdom	100 %	The Irishman
31	Thai / ภาษาไทย	100 %	Chanchana
32	Spanish-VE / Venezuela	100 %	Ricardo A. Rivas
33	Welsh / United Kingdom	100 %	The true king
34	Afrikaans / South-Africa	100 %	African-Man
35	Hebrew / עברית	100 %	DJ Israel
36	Hindi / हिन्दी	100 %	The Hindi Man
37	Indonesian / Indonesia	100 %	Indonesian Super-Girl
38	Malay / Malaysia	100 %	Washington
39	Filipino / Pilipino	100 %	Abraham Lincoln

Program Keys:

1. Windows caption fetch utility?
2. Getwindowtext hook spy?
3. GetWindowText all windows?
4. Title text software?
5. Tool to get window names?
6. Utility to read window title text?
7. Read all texts from a window?
8. Find window name software?
9. Read text from window program?
10. New 2011 text title softwer?
11. Getwindowtext hook spy?
12. Getwindowtext()?
13. GetWindowText 1.22 ITaliano=1
14. Utility window title text`?
15. Windows caption fetch utility?
16. Tool to get text from window?
17. How to get window text of window?
18. Getwindowstexta?
19. Title text software?
20. Get window text program?
21. Find window title utility?
22. Getwindowtext retrieve title and message text?
23. Text from window software?
24. Getwindowtext tool?
25. Get window text program?
26. Program read box text windows -javascript?
27. New 2011 text title saftwer?
28. Windowtitle spy?

Supported MS Windows operating systems:

The window content read out tool is very small and can be used on: Windows 10, Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Enterprise, Windows 10 Home, Windows 8.1, Windows 8.1 Enterprise and Pro, Windows 8, Windows 8 Enterprise and Pro, Windows 7, Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 7 Home Basic, Windows 7 Home Premium + Professional, Windows 7 Starter + Ultimate, , X64, x86 and x32 all Windows, MS Windows Server 2019, 2016,2012, . not only on Windows 10 !

Can I also use it commercially in the company?

The window content selection tool can also be used commercially in the business area free of charge, without restrictions!

WM_GETTEXT message

Copies the text that corresponds to a window into a buffer provided by the caller.

Parameters

The maximum number of characters to be copied, including the terminating null character.

ANSI applications may have the string in the buffer reduced in size (to a minimum of half that of the wParam value) due to conversion from ANSI to Unicode.

A pointer to the buffer that is to receive the text.

Return value

Type: LRESULT

The return value is the number of characters copied, not including the terminating null character.

Remarks

The DefWindowProc function copies the text associated with the window into the specified buffer and returns the number of characters copied. Note, for non-text static controls this gives you the text with which the control was originally created, that is, the ID number. However, it gives you the ID of the non-text static control as originally created. That is, if you subsequently used a STM_SETIMAGE to change it the original ID would still be returned.

For an edit control, the text to be copied is the content of the edit control. For a combo box, the text is the content of the edit control (or static-text) portion of the combo box. For a button, the text is the button name. For other windows, the text is the window title. To copy the text of an item in a list box, an application can use the LB_GETTEXT message.

When the WM_GETTEXT message is sent to a static control with the SS_ICON style, a handle to the icon will be returned in the first four bytes of the buffer pointed to by lParam. This is true only if the WM_SETTEXT message has been used to set the icon.

Rich Edit: If the text to be copied exceeds 64K, use either the EM_STREAMOUT or EM_GETSELTEXT message.

Sending a WM_GETTEXT message to a non-text static control, such as a static bitmap or static icon control, does not return a string value. Instead, it returns zero. In addition, in early versions of Windows, applications could send a WM_GETTEXT message to a non-text static control to retrieve the control’s ID. To retrieve a control’s ID, applications can use GetWindowLong passing GWL_ID as the index value or GetWindowLongPtr using GWLP_ID.

Windows get text from window

I encountered this problem recently and despite many findings on the internet about the issue I couldn’t find any comprehensive solution, especially not for a WPF program. So I decided to summarize how I got it to work in my project.

AutomationElement

First we look at the AutomationElement . There is a very short simple code snippet which if it would work this would be a very short blog post. It works on some program (e g Word and Outlook) but not all (like Internet Explorer). The big advantage about AutomationElement over the copy solution which we will use when AutomationElement doesn’t work, is that we don’t tamper with the Clipboard . In the code below we start by getting an element. I have it easy because I reach my code before my program gets focus so I can just call:

If your program has focus you have to get your element elsewise. After you have your element you try to get a TextPattern and if that succeeds you’re done, just call GetSelection like the example below:

If TryGetCurrentPattern returns false you can´t use AutomationElement (not in any way I have found).

Copy command

The other way is to simulate the copy command and check the Clipboard for the text like so:

This does however not work even if it is a nice small piece of code. The problem is that even if we call the copy command with SendWait very often the actual command has not been executed before we check the Clipboard for its content. Perhaps one could try to fix this by using timers/delay of some kind but there is a more exact way. Set up your program to listen to the copy event. In this way we just send the copy command and will always catch it when it executes. Be careful though because your program will now catch every copy command sent, you probably just want to catch the one your code sent. My solution to this is to set a flag when I call copy and test for it when a copy command is executed.

To set up our program as a copy command listener we use the Win32 command SetClipboardViewer . An example how this can be done is given below:

Why we also listen to WM_CHANGECBCHAIN is described here. As you can see I call Clipboard.Clear() after Clipboard.GetText() , this because I don’t want the text to be left in the Clipboard . One could try to retrieve the content before the copy command and set it back afterwards but I haven’t found any good solution to this. What will you for example do if there is a large file in the Clipboard ? Anyway I believe that if the user copies something to the Clipboard and doesn’t use it right away the user has forgotten about it anyway, and if the Clipboard is empty the user just has to fill it again. But I will still prefer to use the AutomationElement if it is possible just to avoid this problem.

Summary

To sum it up use AutomationElement where it works and otherwise use the copy command with the program set up as a Clipboard listener.