TypeIt4Me

TypeIt4Me is macro software that saves you from typing. Enter a few letters and they expand to whole words, sentences or even documents.

TypeIt4Me
Mac Tip #151/26-May-2004

Oh boy! There are things I have to type day in and day out. Long things. Short things. Tricky things.

And I’m not a good typist. I’m forever getting letters out of order: “teh” instead of “the”, “adn” instead of “and”, “Rahel” instead of “Rachel”.

TypeIt4Me (US$27) is an essential piece of software that sorts it all out for me — in emails, filling forms on the web, typing into half a dozen text editors.

If there’s a mistake I commonly make then I can add that mistake to a list, along with the correction. When I type the mistake and follow it with a customisable “trigger” TypeIt4Me automatically changes my “mistake” to its correct form.

So, if I type “Rahel” followed by a space (but without the speech marks) then TypeIt4Me automatically changes it to “Rachel”.

I could use this for longer texts as well. Let’s say I type a lot of letters and would like to start each one with an address, a date and a greeting. Of course I could use stationery for this, but I could also use TypeIt4Me.

First I type the text I want, select it and copy it. Then I go to the TypeIt4Me menu and choose to Add an Entry… . I choose a name for the entry. This will be the sequence of letters I type to call it up. For something like this I might choose “lhead”. be sure not to choose something you regularly type.

TypeIt4Me Edit Entries window.

If I choose to Edit Entries… I can also choose to add in a date. The screenshot shows me choosing the date format. TypeIt4Me inserts a special marker (in my case that’s [[1]] which reflects the date format). Every time you use the abbreviation TypeIt4Me will replace that code with the current date (or time, depending what you chose).

Download the software and try it out. If you decide it’s useful to you then pay the shareware fee. Then you can figure out how to spend the time you save yourself every day.

Tagged as: macro, text, typing

See more from: Edit text,Mac Tips

It's great to see you visiting again! Have you tried the free MacTips updates via RSS or email, MacTips on Twitter and our YouTube channel? There may be more Tips on this topic. We'd love your Comments too.

Tell us what you think.
Note: there may be a delay before your comment appears. I now approve all comments from new visitors, in an attempt to keep spam at bay.

* 3 comments… read them below and tell us what you think.

Bill Beckett 1 27 May 2004 at 10:34:50: I have one OSX problem regarding TypeIt4Me and that is that each time I log into the system, I have to actually go to the Input Selection and manually select TypeIt4Me. I have read the FAQ and found that he thinks this is an Apple problem, but it still annoys me. Maybe some sort of Apple Script could be written and executed at Startup to activate TypeIt4Me. Is there some other way to handle that situation? I really like the tips. I have learned a lot. Thanks.

Miraz 2 2 June 2004 at 15:43:30: Thanks for your comments on the Tips. I see he mentions that in his FAQ. I’m afraid I don’t have any other way to handle it. I don’t seem to have that problem :-)

Riccardo Ettore 3 6 September 2004 at 00:46:21: this problem should be fixed in TypeIt4Me 2.0 released September 5, 2004