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Mac 101: Making Text Replacement Work

by Erica Sadun Dec 31st 2009 at 1:30PM

Text replacement: it's one of Snow Leopard's really cool features. With it, you can type abbreviations and they'll automatically expand into full text. You can convert your most common phrases into just a few keystrokes, and let Snow Leopard take care of the rest. Here's a quick summary of what you need to do to make text replacement work for you.

Creating Macros in System Preferences.

Open System Preferences (it's in the Apple menu at the top of your screen) and navigate to Language & Text > Text. There you'll find a Symbol and Text Substitution list. Click the + button to add a new item. For this example, put (tuaw) into the Replace column and The Unofficial Apple Weblog into the With column. Leave the box to the left of these items checked.

So why use the parentheses? Strictly speaking, they're not necessary. You can define text substitutions on any set of characters, as shown in the screen shot below. What these parentheses do for me, is that they distinguish between when I want to type TUAW and not have it expand, and when I want the abbreviation to transform into the full Weblog name.



Enabling Text Replacement

Text replacement works on a per-application basis. Many applications default to this feature being off. To make text replacement happen, right-click within any text entry area such as a composition window in Mail or the text entry field in Colloquy, etc. The contextual menu provides a Substitutions submenu. Make sure Text Replacement is checked. If it is not, select it to toggle the option from on to off or off to on.



Applying Text Replacment

The big secret to making text replacement happen, once you've defined the shortcuts and enabled Text Replacement in the contextual menu, is the space key. Snow Leopard does not apply the shortcut replacement until it detects you have finished typing a phrase. Only then does it perform its internal look up and substitution.

Also prepare to wait a second or so. The replacement text often lags behind your typing. So go ahead and keep entering text. The operating system will catch up and perform its substitution work without your oversight.

For Mike G., with TUAW affection

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Text replacement: it's one of Snow Leopard's really cool features. With it, you can type abbreviations and they'll automatically expand...
 

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now4real954

well I use Typinator...and can't LIVE WITHOUT IT...

I have it on all of my macs...and wish I had it on the iPhone

because it annoys me when I am typing something and I don't have the typinator replacing it...lol

and the person saying they don't want to have typinator pushing upgrades to them...well if you are that cheap...ur crazy...

I got typinator from MacHeist and adore it...and set my ical for when the two license upgrade for some nominal amount came up and I made sure I had that little bit of money ready to spend on it...because I have the free version on my old macbook so it's not current version but I use that computer rarely...and I have the new two license version on my MBP and Mac Mini...and I can use drop box to sync them if I want...so please don't complain

the built in one is good for fractions etc...but typinator will do just about anything...and it just sits in the menu bar quiet as a mouse...and I will never go with out it again

January 01 2010 at 4:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Digitarius

I wish this was universally enabled. This tip fails in too many places- Textwrangler, for instance. Also, in Tweetie you can enable the substitutions, but you have to re-enable it every time you create a new tweet. Hardly worth it. :

It'd be nice to be able to force the option universally, rather than wait to have developers provide support for a relatively obscure snow leopard feature. I'd love to not have Typinator pushing upgrades at me all the time and just use this for my simple substitution needs.

January 01 2010 at 3:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
FoxyOrb

Thank's Erica, I had spotted the possibility but had dismissed it as not as useful as similar products but… here is what changed my mind, yes option-return works but compose the text you need elsewhere and paste it in that so small box and voilà!

December 31 2009 at 11:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
morgs

Thanks for this was a really timely article. But tell me, what are all of those other Substitution options about?

December 31 2009 at 8:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
peter

Doesn't work in KeyNote '09 :-(

December 31 2009 at 5:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Graham

Is there a way to make this work in word 2008?

December 31 2009 at 4:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John

Erica - Brilliant! Thanks for the education, I tried all number of dreamt up key combos, but not option-return, which does exactly what I was after.

December 31 2009 at 3:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
MikeWard1701

Thank you for the article. I remember reading somewhere (possibly here) about the system wide text replacement fewture of OS X and I've been meaning to set it up since getting my MBP.

Couple of questions; 1) Is there any way to inport/export for backup/migration? 2) There any Windows text replacement software?

December 31 2009 at 2:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John

Is there a way to do this for text of more than 1 line?
eg so that it expands a chosen shortcut to:

Cheers,
From me

or is it single line only?
I use type it4 me (and it works very well), but only because I haven't found a way to have a shortcut expand into multiple lines with the standard OSX options.

Thanks.

December 31 2009 at 2:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to John's comment
MikeWard1701

I'm not sure about Mac OS but I know that in Windows there are ways to force a new line within text strings.

Can't remember how its done though, may be a sytem wide special character or only available on a per font basis.

December 31 2009 at 2:21 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Erica Sadun

Use Option-Return to add carriage returns. Works fine.

December 31 2009 at 2:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
BigB

This is awesome, I didn't realize this feature was built into the system, I have been using Typeit4me.

I only have a couple basic substitutions so I swapped over to the built in system. Always good to have less overhead and apps running in the background.

December 31 2009 at 2:09 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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