A Review and Beginner's Guide for Smile on My Mac's Text Expander Software

If you are a Mac user who is poor at typing, does not enjoy typing, or is short on time and needs increased efficiency on all fronts then you should take some time to get to know Text Expander from Smile On My Mac. I was lucky enough to win a free copy of this great application through a podcast contest and I am so glad that I have been introduced to this product. Text Expander is a full-featured template creation and shorthand tool that allows you to get more typing done with fewer keystrokes. The "magic" behind this great program lies in the fact that you can set up shortcut words with Text Expander that, when typed, will auto-expand into whatever predetermined text you assign to it.

To get started with Text Expander download the free trial from the Smile On My Mac website or purchase Text Expander for only $29.95. Once downloaded, you can double-click the installer and Text Expander will install as a new item under your Mac's System Preferences. Go to System Preferences (Applications>System Preferences) and select Text Expander from the bottom row. Immediately you will be brought to the Text Expander preferences and you will find that some shortcut words have been preloaded for you including date and time. These shortcut keywords are called "snippets". You may have to customize these default snippets to fit your needs or you can delete them and start from scratch.

How Does It Work?

For starters let's take a look at creating a Name snippet. Start by clicking on the add new Snippet "+" symbol in the lower left corner. A place holder for anew snippet will appear in the list. Go ahead and rename this new snippet as something unique in the "Abbreviation" field in the lower right corner of the window. I am going to use "nname". Select "nname" and then type your name in the box on the right called "Content". This is the text that will appear if you type "nname" in ANY application: browser, MS Word, Text Edit, iTunes, anywhere. Now open a new email or a browser (any app where you can type text) and type the letters nname and then hit the space bar or Return key. Immediately those letters will become your name. Imagine all of the times you would have to type your name and now imagine being able to simply type "nname". If your name happens to be Alexander X. Winterman or the like then this will no doubt be a good news to you!

Let's try a something a little different. Let's create a snippet for your signature that you can use for formal emails or letterhead. If you have to append certain information to the closing of your letters or emails. With Text Expander you only have to type one word. Head back over to the Text Expander preference pane and select the "+" sign from the bottom to add a new snippet. Let's call this one "ssig". Now in the Content field you will type the information you would need to append to those letters and emails. Let's suppose you needed it to say:

John Q. Public

123 Main Street

Atlanta, GA 00000-0000

Phone: 555-555-5555

Your new snippet has now been created. Open up a new email message and type "ssig" and space. Those few little letters become the block of text that you have just specified. You can do the same with your email address. Think of all the online forms in which you have to type blahblah@blah.com over and over and over. Would your life not be much easier if you could type simply "eemail" or "aaddy"?

Now Text Expander is not limited only to what you create. There are some real geniuses out there who have created some snippet libraries which you can download and they are tethered to a database so as those libraries are updated, your local library is updated. You can of course also save your own local copy which you can edit in any way you like.

How About Auto-Correcting Your Spelling Errors?

If you select the downward-pointing arrow next to the "+" sign you will be given the option to download various libraries of snippets. The most useful one to me has been the TidBITSAutoCorrect library. This contains a collection of commonly misspelled words and typos. The common misspelling has been entered as the snippet and it has been set to expand to the correct spelling. A common mistake for me is that I will spell "tomorrow" as "tommorow". From now on, since I have the autocorrect library, anytime I mistype this word it will automatically be corrected for me so I do not have to worry about sending off a an email full of this problem word. This becomes a vital feature for, say, a business that communicates with its clientel via email.

The Bottom Line

The great thing about these tips is that I learned all of this while using Text Expander for the first time. The intuitive nature of this product has quickly made it one of my favorite and indispensable tools. I am not sure that I would have given it a second look prior to my winning it. However that would have been to my great detriment for I have become extremely relient on Text Expander to correct my spelling errors, fill in forms for me and make my typing tasks go much smoother and quicker. I can even use Text Expander to create snippets for common email responses instead of typing them every time. This is a product that has added a new level of ease-of-use to my Mac computing experience. I hope you will try it and let me know how much you enjoy it. Good luck!