Working with text substitution is a bit difficult to get started at first but, once you get used to it, you’ll discovered the huge time saving it allows dealing with repetitive text entries. Here are some tips to get started with text substitution.

Choose abbreviations that are easy to remember

Abbreviations have an advantage over key combinations: they are easier to remember (if you choose them wisely). My suggestion is to use the first letter of the first word of the sentence you want to type. For example, if you frequently type, “Thanks for your help.”, tha can be a good abbreviation. You may also choose the initial letter of each word but this can be challenging if the phrase is long.

Another advantage of using the first letters of the first word is that the confirmation tooltip will appear while you are typing (as the abbreviation is part of the phrase you want to type) allowing you to quickly enter the phrase pressing SHIFT.

Add phrases as you go

You don’t need to setup your environment at the beginning but you can add your phrases incrementally as you work with other applications.

Let’s say you notice that you are using the some phrase over and over answering your customer emails or entering your website. Just select the text and press CTRL+SHIFT+W. Direct Access opens the ‘Add New Autotext’ window with the selected piece of text. It’s just a matter of adding the abbreviation and that piece of information will be available in any program.

Create an universal autocorrect and spell checker

Are you always misspelling a word? Create a new Autotext in Direct Access that enters the correct word and has the misspelled word as the abbreviation. You can also use it to expand words and acronyms. You can also import all your auto-corrections from Microsoft Word and use them in any application.

Group your phrases by context

Define a group for similar phrases and assign an abbreviation to it. When invoked, Direct Access will show a menu with all the contained commands so that you can easily choose the desired phrase from a list. For example, you can define a group support with abbreviation supp which contains all the customer support phrases you normally use. Type supp and Direct Access will show a list of phrase which you can easily insert into an email, document or webpage.

Easily change and tweak your abbreviations

If you want to change an abbreviation for a command that you have just executed, simply press CTRL+SHIFT+E in any application. Direct Access will open the Edit window of the last executed command allowing you to modify it.

Likewise, you can add or remove the confirmation to multiple commands and add suffix and prefix to your favorite abbreviations to adapt the way Direct Access works to your personal taste. For example, you may like adding the “..” suffix to the commands with no confirmation to avoid accidental triggering.

If you don’t know Direct Access, you can learn more at nagarsoft website and download a free trial.