A picture has words you need, a video has audio you need, and a folder has photos that are too large. This guide shows how we used three Microsoft PowerToys tools to handle those jobs in Windows: Advanced Paste’s Image to text, Advanced Paste’s Transcode to .mp3, and Image Resizer.
These are PowerToys utilities that you install separately. The screenshots show our recorded Windows test; control names and placement can differ in another PowerToys release. Each procedure stands on its own, so you can use the written steps without watching the video.
Before you begin
You need a Windows PC with Microsoft PowerToys installed. Use Microsoft’s PowerToys installation guide if you have not installed it. Open PowerToys Settings and check that Advanced Paste and Image Resizer are enabled. Our recording shows Advanced Paste on while the separate Paste with AI option is off. The three actions below did not use a paid AI provider in our test.
1. Turn a picture into editable text
Use this when words are trapped inside a screenshot or other image. In our recording, the source is an image with a short sentence and test number.
- Copy the picture. Open the image, right-click it and choose Copy image. The picture, not merely a file path, must be on the clipboard.
The source image’s context menu has the “Copy image” action. - Open Advanced Paste. Press Windows + Shift + V. In the menu, choose Image to text.
Choose the exact “Image to text” action. The AI prompt box above it is a different feature. - Review and paste the result. The recorded panel previews recognized words. Click Paste. In our test, we opened Notepad and used Edit > Paste to place the recognized text in the document.
Inspect the recognized text before using the Paste button. 
The words are editable in Notepad; the line breaks did not all survive unchanged.
Check accuracy: Compare numbers, names, punctuation and line breaks with the original image. Our first capture had a blinking cursor that was read as an extra digit. We removed the cursor from the source capture and checked the corrected result. Keep the image until you have checked the text. If Image to text is missing from Advanced Paste, check whether that action is enabled in PowerToys Settings.
2. Extract a video’s audio as an MP3
This copies the existing audio track into a separate file. It does not generate a voice, remove noise or transcribe speech.
- Copy a video file in File Explorer. Select the video and click Explorer’s Copy toolbar button. Ctrl + C is the equivalent shortcut.
Select the video file first. 
Our recorded action uses the Copy toolbar button. - Open the destination folder and Advanced Paste. In the folder where you want the new file, press Windows + Shift + V. Choose Transcode to .mp3 from the menu, then wait for conversion.
Choose “Transcode to .mp3.” It is a separate action from Image to text. - Check the new file. File Explorer shows a separate MP3 while the original video remains. Open the MP3 and listen to the beginning, middle and end before using it.
The MP3 appears beside the original video in the recorded folder.
Microsoft’s Advanced Paste guide documents the available actions. If Transcode to .mp3 is absent in your installation, check the Advanced Paste options in PowerToys Settings and the file you copied. The test does not establish support for every media format or codec.
3. Resize several pictures together
Image Resizer acts on multiple selected files in File Explorer. We tested one landscape, one portrait and one square picture.
- Select your source pictures. In File Explorer, select all the image files you want in the batch.
The three source images are selected together. - Open the Image Resizer dialog. Right-click the selection and choose Resize with Image Resizer.
Use the PowerToys entry in the context menu. - Choose a preset and preserve originals. Our recorded dialog shows Small — Fit 854 × 480 pixels, Ignore the orientation of pictures checked and Overwrite files unchecked. Those exact options affect the outputs shown below. Keep Overwrite files unchecked if you want separate copies.
Check the preset and the Overwrite files box before running the batch. - Click Resize once. Then inspect the copies in File Explorer and verify their actual pixel dimensions before uploading or sending them.
One click runs the selected batch.
The saved results in our test were different shapes, as expected with this Fit preset and the recorded orientation option:
| Picture | Original | Resized copy |
|---|---|---|
| Landscape | 1600 × 1000 | 768 × 480 |
| Portrait | 900 × 1500 | 480 × 800 |
| Square | 1200 × 1200 | 480 × 480 |
Read Microsoft’s Image Resizer guide for other size options. Do not infer pixel dimensions from thumbnail appearance or text printed inside a sample image; inspect file properties.
Check the results and limitations
Our three recorded actions produced editable text, an MP3 file and separate resized images. We did not measure a repeatable time saving, score OCR accuracy across many images or test every media codec. The screen recording does not identify the PowerToys version, so a different release may place controls differently.
If you want a quick acceptance checklist after trying these steps, see our companion PowerToys results guide. The two guides use the same three examples; this page supplies the step-by-step procedures.
Prefer to watch the demonstration?
The written tutorial above has the complete steps. The matching video is available if you prefer to see the actions in motion.
If the embed does not load, watch the PowerToys demonstration on YouTube.