Safari Autofill

Wed 25 February 2004

Let Safari fill in forms for you.

Safari Autofill
Mac Tip #138/25-Feb-2004

I’m forever visiting web pages which require me to type in my name, address, phone number and so on. And believe me, when you’re not a great typist and live in a part of town called Hataitai you don’t want to be typing that too many times!

Autofill checkboxes in Safari.

So, go to the Safari menu and choose Preferences, then click on Autofill. Now check the settings you’d like Safari to use. I check all three options.

Now if you visit a page with a form (for example visit the Tips archive and click on Comment below any post) you need only go to the Edit menu and choose AutoFill Form or type Command Shift A to enter details.

Sometimes when you fill in a form Safari will pop up a dialog box offering to fill in such forms in future. I usually choose to do that.

Just be sure to double check the information Safari has entered. It depends on how the web designer has set up the form, but I occasionally find my email address in a phone number field for example.

This gem saves much error-prone typing on my part.

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Tagged as: autofill, macro, safari, text

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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Kee Hinckley Thu 26 February 2004 at 13:32:21: One thing I recently discovered is that this feature is responsible for the long delays I get when I change a form on a page I’ve been to before. I have to wait while Safari writes the changes to a 180k file. The wait can take as long as 20 seconds. They need to make some serious changes to how they store the information.

Reply
2 Dave Wed 29 September 2004 at 04:21:56: Hello,
I have a question.
Under Safari’s Preferences, I have edited my Autofill site list. I removed .google.com
because it was constantly autofilling in longer searches I had done in the past, even though I might want to make a more basic search (eg, I want to search “kospi”, but it autofills to “kospi outlook” etc)
so, I removed the .google.com site from the list, but there doesn’t seem to be an option to add sites to that list… is there?

any help would be greatly appreciated,

cheers,

dave.

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3 Agu Happon Wed 03 November 2004 at 02:13:44: Sorry Dave, but if a page is coded in such a way that Safari is capable of auto-filling a form in it, it will remember your entries without you having to do anything. The very fact that you want to “add a site” that apparently isn’t remembering your data for later auto-filling means the site itself… has non-labeled form elements, has privacy settings specifically requesting that the browser not remember the visit, or is otherwise incompatible with Safari’s autofill. Sorry for the downer. Respectfully, Agu

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4 bob hanssen Tue 02 December 2008 at 15:48:13: i have been fooling around with autofill for a number of hours today. i have tried all the suggestions in the help menu. before i started fooling with this my son’s info always autofilled, now nothing fills. my original goal was to just change the info thru the editing box in the preferences. i have checked all boxes in the preferences file but cannot open the address book card to edit anything. my address book is the one that came with my mac, i can’t seem to access that for my info. what should i do now?

thanks for your help, bob

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5 patrick Thu 25 December 2008 at 20:39:19: my issues is that autofill was working for a website for the entire time ive had my computer but lately my brother has been using my computer and now the autofill will not keep my information so i wanted to delete it and add it but now when i go to the site i no longer get the option to save my information and when i press apple shift A it says it cant save it even though it has for as long as ive used the website (at least two years now) suggestions?

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6 Miraz Jordan Thu 25 December 2008 at 21:09:31: Patrick, try clicking the Edit button on the lower two items of the screenshot in my Tip.

You may be able to remove the problem website and then add it in again.

Perhaps also try the Empty Cache item under the Safari menu, then Quit and restart Safari.

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7 lenfink Tue 21 April 2009 at 14:55:45: Cannot figure out how to change my address default to autofil and Dashboard.
I have moved. I must have done it before. I assume it is easy- “under my nose”.
But, it is not Apple intuitive to me! Len.

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8 Miraz Jordan Tue 21 April 2009 at 20:31:57: Hi Len,

are you saying that you moved house from, for example 123 Main St to 456 High St, but Safari’s autofill still enters 123 Main St?

Have a look under Safari’s Autofill Prefs. Under Using info from my Address Book card click the Edit button and make sure you change your address on your Address Book card.

Does that help?

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9 Miraz Jordan Wed 22 April 2009 at 11:41:02: Added on behalf of Len:

“This worked… have 2 homes and separated them to different cards.
So, it was a bit more complicated.

Thanks for your help.”

Reply
10 Jacques Sat 07 November 2009 at 12:57:58: Autofill working before but not now, I have tried everything, what’s next

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