Bonjour, I'm Jean Lalonde, the developer of Quick Access Popup. Welcome to this bit-by-bit video about user variables. We'll see in this video in the next 10 minutes what are user variables, why you would use them, especially to shorten long paths or when you are using a shared menu with favorites that are saved on Cloud Drive. You'll see that various users will find it very convenient to be able to use user variables for their shared menu. We will see how you create user variables and how you can insert them in your favorites. And we'll finish with a quick overview of how you could get more information about that on quickaccesspopup.com website. So let's open the menu here and see. That's the default menu that we have. And let's say that we want to add a folder or a file that is on a very long... You know some network drive will have a lot of content, with a big structure on them, and to get to your file, maybe to the file you use every day, you may need to go deeply to browse various sub-levels in your directory structure to find the folder you need. So I created an example of this here, of course it's a fake example, but it will give you an idea of... what I mean. So let's say I want to add a document that is on my network drive which is on my d drive under my Dropbox folder under the QAP demo and here we have a shared menu demo folder and oh here the very long path excuse me very long path folder path to the folders I am using frequently but are hidden so deep in the network drive and finally here I get to the client's folder that I'm using every day and here it was easy there was only one folder in each sub-level but normally you have to search for the right sub-folders for each sub-level so let's say that under my client folder here I want to use a file from the ABC client Under is project folders and there's this ABC project where there's a status report that I want to use. Finally I found the file but I have here a very long path to this file but just to check that it works well I will save my menu keeping the settings window open and check here if the status report menu works well. Yes it opens my Word document. But now, if I have to do it frequently, instead of having to browse all these folders, I could create a user variable. And I'll do it here first by selecting the long path until the clients folder. Here it is. So I stop here at client, I cut it and put it in my clipboard. And instead I will create a user variable with the name clients. It could be the name of your choice. So clients, this name has to be between curly brackets. That's very important to use curly brackets. And when we will create the variable to use the exact same wording or same letters here to name the variable. So I'm saving it. So of course if I was trying to use it now it would not work because Quick Access Popup doesn't know what means clients here. But if I go to options and go under the more tab here, we have user variables button to click and it opens the list of your current user variables. On some system, Quick Access Popup will be able, the first time you open it, to detect some cloud drive routes and create automatically user variables for these cloud drives, like Dropbox or Google Drive. In the case of this environment here, I'm using for the demo, it is not possible to do it, so the list is empty. In fact, it just contains an example of user variables, so I will use this example here to say that... Instead of my variables, I will make a variable named clients with an S. And after the equal sign here, I will paste the very long path that I was having in my favorite. So I'm saving this. Save the options. And now if I open my menu, I have to save my... The changes in my menu. So now if I open the status report favorite. It will find the status report even if in the path I entered clients here instead of the very long path. So I can reuse this path. For example I want to create a folder. So I'll create a folder to my clients root and simply enter here curly bracket clients closing curly brackets save and I now have this favorite that will take me directly to the root of this very long path so that's very convenient you can save time by using by using this the second reason to use it and there then it's most more critical because if you use shared menu you know shared menu can be used on different computers it can be different of your computer you can have yourself two computers and you want to share to share favorites with Dropbox folder or iCloud or Google Drive folders that are on these different machines, but not necessarily having the same route, the same path to the root of your cloud drive. So I'll show you an example. So you could use, maybe you use it, and if not, I suggest that you explore the usage of shared menu to have a common menu that can be used on your different machines for these favorites and if you're part of a team each user of a team can also use a shared drive on a cloud drive for example like Dropbox to share the files and also a list of favorites in their menu using the shared menu favorites so let's click Add and add a shared menu to show you what I mean by all this my shared menu is under my root drive I will just get back here to the QAP demo shared menu demo and my example here is under examples for demo so this shared menu here could be used on different machines that I own or with my colleagues or friends that also have a shared menu and also have a cloud drive with their files on it so here I have this path to my Dropbox shared menu demo and if I show you what is in this folder in this shared menu we have here various files but the one I want to show you is the ABC status doc One is on C and one is on D. My Dropbox is on my D drive so if I open this favorite here it will work I have the file I want to to see but if a colleague is also using having this file on this Dropbox folder but but if his Dropbox folder is not on the C drive if I try to open it I will have an error it will tell me that the C Dropbox does not exist so I have an error here so what I can do instead and both of us have to do that me and my colleagues or if it's you having different computers you have to do it on all of your computers that are sharing these Dropbox files so I'll use this one here and I will copy the favorite so instead of on D I will say it is on Dropbox variable just to make it distinct and now instead of D backslash drop box I will cut it and enter instead drop box between curly brackets and I copy the file so this one here is the new one I will move it at the top and now I go into the options Under more user variables, I will now go on the second line and create a new variable named Dropbox. closing curly bracket equal and I paste the root of Dropbox on my system in in this environment I have my Dropbox on D Drive my colleagues would do the same if his Dropbox is on the C Drive you will enter C instead of D here okay save save and close And now under my shared menu I know I have this route this this favorite that works on my D Drive but there's also this one that I just created that is using the user variable and if I open it it will open the file correctly because in the menu Here, the Dropbox variable is expanded, if you wish, with the correct route on this machine. So then this can be shared by any user of our shared menu, and if they create the correct variable, it will work perfectly. So these are some of the usages of the user variables. If you want to find more help on that, you can go on Quick Access Popup website. There's a link to it in the default Quick Access pop-up menu. And under the knowledge base section, there's a lot of information on installing, using Quick Access pop-up, basic to advanced features. And if you want to go directly to a topic like what we've just seen, the user variables, you can use the search box here. And it will take you directly to our topic, which is in our case... Can I create custom user variables and use them in file or snippets? Because this can also be used in snippets. I haven't covered that here, but you'll find more if you read this information here. So I hope it was helpful. You can find more information by browsing the website. Hoping to see you there and thank you for your attention.