Why text expansion is so valuable (bright upbeat music) If you'd like to save an awful lot of time while you're typing at your computer, then this video is for you.
I wanna show you two of my favorite text expansion tools and share why you should be using something like this every single day.
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
And if you're not using a text expansion tool, you're wasting an awful lot of time.
Now I don't usually like to point blame at anyone, but wouldn't it be easier to just hit one or two keystrokes on your keyboard and have an entire email reply ready to go, or maybe half of that article or that agreement or whatever it is you're writing all ready there.
Well, that's where text expansion tools come into play.
Let's get started off with a tool which is called Text Blaze.
Text Blaze overview and how to start
Now Text Blaze is actually a Chrome extension.
So it is somewhat limited to only filling in things and adding text within your browser, but for many of us, we spend the majority of our time dealing with email, dealing with documents, filling in forms, for example, online, and I really liked the way that Text Blaze lays everything out.
It's quite simple to navigate.
So let me give you a quick tour and show you what you need to know.
Here on the left-hand side, I'm in my folder called My Snippets.
Now both of the tools that we're looking at today will allow you to group these snippets into different folders, and that's very important because over time you may accumulate a large number, and it's very valuable to group them into different categories that make sense to you.
So let's start off with something rather simple, something that I am sharing on a regular basis, and that is my Zoom meeting link.
Well, number one, I don't want to have to remember it and actually type in this link every time, and I don't wanna go and copy and paste it from somewhere else either.
I would rather hit just two keystrokes on my computer and input it directly wherever I want it to be.
So here, I've got the label for the snippet, which I'm calling Zoom link, and that's just for my reference, just so I know which one I'm looking at and talking about here.
To the right, we have the shortcut.
Now this can be anything that you want.
You can see that I'm using a /Z in this case.
So that's quick and easy for me to input this information.
The shorter, the better, but keep in mind you don't wanna be using common combinations or actual words that are going to be confused because whenever you enter this in this snippet, what you enter into this box down below is going to appear.
So having something like a forward slash or an asterisk, something else with a special character, is not a bad idea because you're probably not using that elsewhere as well.
So here we go.
I've got the link down below.
I've got the meeting password.
This is where I want to input anywhere I go.
I'm going to open up this Google Doc just to use as my example here, I'm going to enter in /Z, and immediately there we go.
I've got my information.
So if I'm replying to someone via email, if I need to share this quickly and easily, all I need to do is hit two keystrokes on my computer to do so.
To add your own snippet, all you need to do is hit this plus icon here.
You'll get a fresh workspace, a fresh snippet to create here, to give it a label, a shortcut, and then enter your text down below.
But remember, you can go much further than just a simple phrase or a simple piece of text.
How to use text expansion for email replies
I've got one down here below which I am calling my Trello reply because I do offer Trello consulting services.
And often people are inquiring about my services.
Now this is a great example.
You think of how many times in your workday are you responding with the same reply, or at least 95% of that reply is identical to the other 100 that came before it.
So in this case, I may want to customize something.
I may want to change maybe one of these questions, but most of the time, this is my default response.
So I have it all written out here.
I've got a link back to my webpage here.
I can add other customized pieces of information here as well.
So when I'm replying to that, and I'm just going to go back to my Google document for an example here, my shortcut key this time is /tr.
There I've got that information.
Boom, immediately I can hit send and go on with the rest of my day.
Now Text Blaze does allow some further customization, such as adding the current date, or doing some date math.
You can add in custom fields and custom names, but why don't we jump into our next tool, TextExpander, and I'll show you some of this capability there as well.
TextExpander overview and how to start
So the difference between TextExpander and Text Blaze is that TextExpander applies to your entire system.
It's not just limited to your web browser.
So this is great if you want to be able to use text expansion in other parts of your software, when you're working offline or maybe you just prefer to work on a desktop version of Microsoft Word, for example, you can use all this information here as well.
Now for today's example, since I'm using two different text expansion tools, I've decided to use a different prefix.
As we saw here in Text Blaze, I'm using a forward slash so I know that it's a Text Blaze expander or a Text Blaze snippet.
Here in TextExpander, I'm using the letter Z.
So everything is starting with the letter Z.
Now where I might need to be careful is if I have a combination of words, maybe like Z E.
I've got one here that's Z E M.
Remember, it's not Z E O or Z E R.
If I'm typing the word zero, but you want to make sure that no component of those combination of words doesn't exist in another word.
You're going to find that out pretty quickly, and then you'll need to come in here and change it.
So as we saw in Text Blaze, we also have the ability to group things together in different folders.
TextExpander is a little more full-featured.
Advanced libraries in TextExpander
In my opinion If we come down here to brand names, for example, they have a feature where they have this long list of common brand names and the way that they will auto-correct for you.
So it's more than just inputting text that you want.
Let's say that you keep forgetting is Mailchimp with a capital C or is it with a lowercase C?
Well, Mailchimp's proper name happens to be with a lowercase C, but it doesn't matter.
So if I come back here to my example and I'm going to purposely type in Mailchimp with a capital C, it's automatically going to change it to the proper lowercase C.
So it's more than just inputting the text.
It can actually be an auto-corrector and choosing the correct format.
And you can customize that as well.
Let's open up our TextExpander dialogue here for a second and go back to my own snippets.
Adding date math to TextExpander
I want to pull up one here which is called form submission response.
So for example, let's say that I get someone to fill in a form and then I want to send them back a response, but you'll notice I've added a little bit of customization to this particular one.
Here I've said in my final line, "Let me review the form you submitted, and I will get back to you by," and I've got some math going on here.
So I've said add two days to the day, month, day format.
So what this is going to do is it's going to add two days to the current day right now.
So whenever I input this into my email or if it's somewhere else, either online or offline, it's going to do that math for me.
Let's go back and check this one in real time.
So I'm going to come here Z form.
So there it is.
There's my snippet.
And remember, it can be much lengthier than this if I want to.
But at the end, it says, "I will get back to you by Thursday, March 11th."
That's correct.
Because as I'm recording this video, it is Tuesday, March 9th.
So you can adjust this.
You can add more complicated calculations here just to customize your responses rather than "I'll get back to you soon."
Or maybe there's an expected shipping date, something along those lines.
Including name fields to TextExpander
Do this to make it a lot more personal as well. Let me bring back this snippet here.
And at the very beginning, I'm going to say, "Hi," I'm going to leave a space, but in here, I'm going to choose this option, which is called fill-ins.
And I'm going to choose a single line field.
And in this case, the name I'm going to give it is just that—it's going to be a name because I wanna personalize this response a little bit more.
I don't wanna just leave it in the format it's in right now.
I want to input someone's name.
So by doing so, I'm going to hit okay here.
The last thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add a comma just for formatting, just so it looks more natural.
So it's going to actually prompt me to input the name I want before it inserts into my text.
Let's minimize this and see this again in action.
So I'm gonna type in my keywords, and just before it goes into the document where my cursor was, I'm going to get this little pop-up down below and you can see the cursor is waiting for me to input a name.
So I'm going to say, "Hi, Steve," in this case.
And all I need to do is hit enter.
And now, boom, Steve is right there.
I can address Steve in this email reply.
Now you can also add that same name field that we just saw in multiple parts of your snippet.
So think of something a little lengthier, like an agreement, maybe it's a longer email and you want to address them again later on in that message.
You only have to enter it in once, but it's going to appear in all of those places.
And the nice thing is that TextExpander is going to give you that preview as well.
Well, I would love to hear from you next—are you already using a text expansion tool?
If so, what are some of your best tips and tricks to getting the most out of these services?
Thank you so much for watching, and remember being productive does not have to be difficult.
In fact, it's very simple.
