{ "author": { "url": "https://twitter.com/TextExpander", "avatar": "https://textexpander.com/static/images/feed-icon.png", "name": "TextExpander" }, "icon": "https://textexpander.com/static/images/feed-icon.png", "favicon": "https://textexpander.com/static/images/feed-favicon.png", "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1", "user_comment": "This feed allows you to read the posts from this site in any feed reader that supports the JSON Feed format. To add this feed to your reader, copy the following URL -- https://textexpander.com/feed/json/ -- and add it your reader.", "home_page_url": "https://textexpander.com", "feed_url": "https://textexpander.com/feed/json/", "title": "TextExpander", "description": "Communicate Smarter", "items": [ { "id": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-tips-how-to-keep-your-team-on-message-with-textexpander-snippets/", "url": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-tips-how-to-keep-your-team-on-message-with-textexpander-snippets/", "title": "How to Keep Your Team On-Message With TextExpander Snippets", "content_html": "

TextExpander enables you and your team to share support responses, marketing messages, links, and more with a couple keystrokes or a quick search. It can be especially useful for your company messaging and marketing, as there are a few tricks that ensure everyone in your organization can help spread your best promotions across all channels.

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An Example Marketing Snippet

\n

\"\"

\n

At Smile Software, we all have personalized snippets for our email signatures. Those snippets include some form of our current promotional message, which usually informs customers about our latest release. Our current message is:

\n
\n

We’re celebrating the 1 year anniversary of the new TextExpander\u2014see what gains we’ve made, from new apps to powerful collaboration: http://smle.us/68zv2o

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PDFpen and PDFpenPro 9 – Out Now Over 100 enhancements to improve your PDF editing experience. Check out what’s new http://smle.us/qa57mh

\n
\n

That snippet was created by our marketing folks, who maintain and update it when we have something new to share. Once they update it, everyone in the company automatically gets the new messaging via the magic of shared snippets and nested snippets. This message can be automatically added to things like email signatures, adapted for social media campaigns, and more. Here\u2019s how it all works.

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Note: We\u2019ll stick with the email signature for examples in this post. But these snippets and techniques can expand way beyond email to social media efforts, blog post templates, forum responses, and much more.

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Sharing Snippets With the Team

\n

With TextExpander for Teams, you can share groups of text snippets with others in your organization. Many of our customers have groups for things like common customer support responses, links to frequently used company resources, marketing messages, and even fun stuff like emoji.

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You can even assign admin to snippet groups so they can make changes to snippets. TextExpander makes sure any changes are immediately available to all other group subscribers. Check out our blog post on how to get started with TextExpander for Teams and sharing snippet groups.

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Nesting Snippets Inside Other Snippets

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Here\u2019s where the magic happens. TextExpander allows you to nest snippets inside other snippets. As in, if you make a reference to other snippets inside of one, you can expand all at once. To see how this works, here’s one example from our customer support email signatures:

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\"\"

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See the %snippet:myname% and %snippet:sigsup% bits in that signature? That’s how you include snippets inside others\u2014by adding snippet:[abbreviation] (the unique abbreviation assigned to triggering a particular snippet). Whenever one of our representatives uses this support email signature, those nested snippets tell TextExpander to also include:

\n
    \n
  1. A snippet that calls their name (the “myname” snippet)
    2. \n
  2. Our latest marketing snippet (the “sigsup” snippet)
    3. \n
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Our support reps generally don’t have admin privileges to edit marketing snippets, but that doesn’t matter. Our marketing folks keep them up to date, which enables our support reps to share our latest company messaging without lifting a finger.

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Go Forth and Embed

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We hope this helps you and your organization spend less time typing, and more time #onbrand. Let us know what you think of shared snippets and embedded snippets on our TextExpander support page, Twitter @TextExpander, and LinkedIn.

\n", "date_published": "2017-05-30T05:28:54+00:00", "date_modified": "2017-05-30T06:20:07+00:00", "author": { "name": "David Chartier" }, "image": "https://textexpander.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Team-on-message-nested-snippets-banner.jpg" }, { "id": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-how-to-use-snippet-group-prefixes-for-faster-text-snippets-easier-team-sharing/", "url": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-how-to-use-snippet-group-prefixes-for-faster-text-snippets-easier-team-sharing/", "title": "TextExpander How-To: Use Snippet Group Prefixes for Faster Text Snippets, Easier Team Sharing", "content_html": "

\"\"

\n

TextExpander is all about helping you type less and do more. When it comes to using your text snippets quickly and easily, a strong, memorable abbreviation system for triggering them can make all the difference. If you or your team could use some help in this department, check out one of our newest features: Snippet Group Prefixes.

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The Short Explanation

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You can now add an abbreviation prefix to a snippet group. This means all of its snippets start with the same, uniform abbreviation, which makes it easier for you and your team to remember and search for snippets.

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Snippet Group Prefixes In Practice

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Let’s say you have a group of snippets with responses to common customer support questions. You could add a group prefix of “cs;”, then simply add topical abbreviations to each individual snippet like “thanks,” “shipping,” and “FAQ.”

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Now you can simply type “cs;thanks” or “cs;shipping” in whichever apps or services you use to instantly insert your response. This makes it easy to remember and use this group’s current and future snippets.

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Even better, the time-saving benefits are compounded when sharing your snippets in a team setting. A uniform system of abbreviations, combined with always-up-to-date text snippets, ensures everyone puts forth the latest company messaging and policies.

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How To Set a Snippet Group Prefix

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To apply a Snippet Group Prefix, you’ll need to open the Group Settings:

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If it’s a shared group you subscribed to, it may already has a prefix set. There is also the option to apply a personal prefix to override it (learn more about this below).

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How To Share a Snippet Group With Others

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If you want to share a snippet group with someone else or with your team, you can also do this from Group Settings:

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On that screen, you can enter email addresses of your new snippet collaborators. You can also assign edit permissions here if you want to allow others to make additions and changes.

\n

Use Your Own Prefixes in Shared Snippets

\n

For people in team environments who already have their own snippet abbreviation thing going on, we have you covered.

\n

If you join a snippet group that already has a prefix applied by its admin, you can override it with your own local prefix. Use the instructions listed above to view the Group Settings for that group and add your own prefix.

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That’s All For Now

\n

We hope this helps you and your team to get started with faster, more efficient snippet abbreviations and groups. We’d also love to hear what you think on our TextExpander support page, on Twitter @TextExpander, and LinkedIn.

\n", "date_published": "2017-05-23T06:30:48+00:00", "date_modified": "2017-05-22T13:10:48+00:00", "author": { "name": "David Chartier" }, "image": "https://textexpander.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_1366.jpg" }, { "id": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-tip-try-our-ios-keyboard-and-one-tap-text-snippet-keys/", "url": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-tip-try-our-ios-keyboard-and-one-tap-text-snippet-keys/", "title": "TextExpander Tip: Try Our iOS Keyboard and One-Tap Text Snippet Keys", "content_html": "

\"\"

\n

We built TextExpander to help you communicate smarter and type less everywhere you work, including on your iPhone and iPad. That’s why we created a way for iOS developers to add TextExpander support right into their apps. But TextExpander for iOS also has a custom keyboard with some great snippet tricks. Here are a few tips on how to enable it and get the most out of it, including one-tap snippets in any app.

\n

How To: Set Up the TextExpander Keyboard for iPhone and iPad

\n

If you haven’t used any third-party keyboards in iOS, it’s a pretty great feature that can enable all sorts of useful tools. Here’s how to enable ours, including a video if that’s more your style:

\n\n

\n

Now you’re ready to cook with gasoline. Er, type snippets with gasoline. You get the idea.

\n

How To: Use the TextExpander keyboard

\n\n

How To: Set Up Snippets with Snippet Keys

\n

One of the coolest features of the TextExpander Keyboard is Snippet Keys. This allows you to switch the TextExpander keyboard into a sort of “snippet board,” where the snippets you choose get their own button each, for one tap expansion. If you need help wrapping your head around the concept, check out the video (and instructions below) on how it works, because it’s pretty awesome:

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\n\n

How To: Use Snippet Keys

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In any app:

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Yep, the TextExpander Keyboard is pretty awesome

\n

Told you. We hope this gets you started with some of the great stuff you can do with the TextExpander Keyboard for iOS and Snippet Keys. We’d also love to hear what you think on our TextExpander support page, on Twitter @TextExpander, and LinkedIn.

\n", "date_published": "2017-05-11T10:58:05+00:00", "date_modified": "2017-05-11T10:59:45+00:00", "author": { "name": "David Chartier" }, "image": "https://textexpander.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TextExpander-Keyboard-banner-image.jpg" }, { "id": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-crossover-set-up-meetings-faster-with-textexpander-and-calendly/", "url": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-crossover-set-up-meetings-faster-with-textexpander-and-calendly/", "title": "TextExpander Crossover: Set Up Meetings Faster With TextExpander and Calendly", "content_html": "

\"\"

\n

In many industries, meeting with other people is a standard part of the job, from Sales and Recruiting, to just getting the monthly office meeting together. This process is usually an exercise in frustration, though, with days-long email exchanges and scheduling tennis. Fortunately, TextExpander and Calendly can help. A lot!

\n

For the uninitiated, TextExpander is our typing app and service. It helps you and your organization communicate smarter and save a ton of typing time. As for the folks at Calendly, they built something we love: a great way to take the pain out of scheduling meetings, creating the calendar event, and reminding everyone to attend.

\n

The Old Way to Set Up Meetings

\n

Does this email exchange look familiar?

\n

Day 1: “Let\u2019s get together to discuss. How about 10am on Friday?”
\nDay 3: “No, can\u2019t do that.”
\nDay 8: “Can you suggest a time that does work for you?”
\nDay 17: “How about Thursday at 11am?”
\nA month later: “11am doesn\u2019t work, how about 10am the same day.”

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This back and forth may take a few days, or it can… drag on. But sooner or later, you usually pin something down.

\n

Finally! Now you can open your calendar (in our case, Google Calendar), add an event, and invite the other party. But invitations can be lost, you might forget to create it in the first place, or people might simply forget to show up. Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us!

\n

There’s a better way.

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The New Way to Set Up Meetings, Thanks to TextExpander and Calendly

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To show you a much easier way to schedule meetings people will actually attend, let’s set up some context.

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TextExpander allows you to instantly insert chunks of text\u2014boilerplate responses, links, today’s date, marketing messages, and more\u2014anywhere you have to type. Calendly gives you a shareable landing page where people can easily schedule meetings with you. We know what you\u2019re thinking, and the answer is yes: it plugs into your calendar so you don’t double book. Plus, Calendly automatically adds the event to your calendar and everyone involved gets an attendance reminder.

\n

When combined, TextExpander and Calendly can do some pretty cool things:

\n
    \n
  1. Sign up for a free account at <Calendly.com>
    2. \n
  2. Follow its onboarding process, plug in your calendar service of choice so Calendly can see when you’re busy, and set up at least one or two meeting types that people can choose to meet with you
    3. \n
  3. Copy your Calendly link\u2014click the menu in the upper right, choose “Share Your Link,” and copy it from the window that appears
    4. \n
  4. Create a TextExpander snippet that contains your typical \u201clet\u2019s set up a meeting\u201d pitch. But this time, tweak your process to offer to let the other party choose a time that works best for them. Remember: Calendly already know which times work for you
    5. \n
  5. Paste your Calendly link into the snippet
    6. \n
  6. Give it a memorable abbreviation that’s easy for you to trigger, and you\u2019re good to go. One suggestion: sch,meet
    7. \n
\n

\"\"

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Now, the next time you have to put something on the calendar, use your snippet abbreviation and watch the magic happen. TextExpander will do all the typing and link pasting for you, Calendly will handle the scheduling and reminding, and you can handle looking like an expert meeting scheduler.

\n", "date_published": "2017-05-08T07:25:23+00:00", "date_modified": "2017-05-05T13:18:48+00:00", "author": { "name": "David Chartier" }, "image": "https://textexpander.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_1329.jpg" }, { "id": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-for-teams-get-started/", "url": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-for-teams-get-started/", "title": "How to Get Started with TextExpander for Teams", "content_html": "

\"\"

\n

TextExpander has always been about helping you type less and communicate smarter. Last year, we expanded that vision to Teams. Now, you can easily share and manage snippets\u2014chunks of expandable text which everyone can activate with a couple keystrokes or quick search\u2014with one or a thousand coworkers, family members, and friends.

\n

TextExpander snippets are serious business that can save your organization an exponentially increasing amount of typing time. That means TextExpander for Teams can do amazing things for your customer service, data entry and reporting, marketing messaging, internal documentation, family planning lists\u2026 we could go on. But what all is included with Teams, and how does one get started? Here\u2019s a primer.

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How to set up your Organization

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In TextExpander for Teams, \u201cOrganizations\u201d are a convenient way for larger groups of people to manage their shared snippets. Organizations allow the admin team to share one more groups of snippets with specific members, departments, or simply people who are on a \u201cneed to know basis.\u201d There’s also a permission system that allows admins to give control to some members to edit snippets, view informative performance statistics, and manage billing.

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\"\"

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Once you sign up for TextExpander and sign into your account, you need to create an Organization. You can learn more about Organizations and how to set them up in our support doc and video tutorial, but the general steps involved go like this:

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    \n
  1. Create or sign into your TextExpander account
    2. \n
  2. Create an Organization
    3. \n
  3. Add some shared snippet groups from the available list
    4. \n
  4. Add some team members, with appropriate permissions
    5. \n
  5. Add said team members to relevant snippet groups
    6. \n
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You can even speed up new employee onboarding using your company’s email domain. Opt to allow anyone who signs up with your company address to be automatically added to your Organization, as well as any snippets groups you’ve set to be auto-joined.

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How to get the most out of your Organization

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Now that your Organization is up and running, here are some great ways to make it run well.

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Use nested snippets to stay personal but #onbrand

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Say you want to keep an always-up-to-date company marketing message in each of your different email signatures, and in your co-worker\u2019s signatures, but those signatures need to stay unique to each of you. This is where nesting a snippet inside another comes in.

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This is one of our email signature snippets. It contains a nested snippet that automatically inserts our latest marketing message or promotion

\n

Each of you creates your own snippet for your signatures, private to each of you. Then, you can reference, or nest, the shared snippet which contains your company’s marketing email message. That way every time you expand your signature, the marketing message expands along with it. And, because the message is shared, when it gets updated you all the get update, no effort involved. That\u2019s just one benefit of a snippet shared with the team, in a group controlled by the Organization.

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Snippet abbreviations your way, with group prefixes and overrides

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Each snippet you use is expanded from a search, or by typing an abbreviation. To help categorize a group of snippets, you might give them all the same prefix on their abbreviations. TextExpander allows you to define a prefix for an entire group. For example, all snippets in your Customer Support group could have an abbreviation that starts with “CS,” making it easier and faster for team members to trigger or search on the one they need.

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But, TextExpander also allows individuals to set their own prefix overrides, for those times when you just need something different, perhaps due to abbreviations conflicting with some of your other abbreviations. If you or your team have your own personal snippet and abbreviation systems going, this is a great way to make sure your team snippets fit into your workflow. Learn more about snippet prefixes and how to override them.

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Understand your snippet use and time saved

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One of the best tools to use across your Organization is statistics. These allow you to see how your snippets are being used across teams, how much time you’re saving as an organization, and more.

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\"\"

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You can learn more about stats, but here’s a good concrete example: during our major release of the new version 6 last year, TextExpander saved us over 50 hours that week alone!

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Keep your snippets

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If you come into an Organization with your own snippets, should you decide to leave one day, you\u2019ll want to keep your snippets as your snippets.

\n

To do that, you can add a personal, non-Organization email address to your account, or just switch email addresses entirely. This way, any snippets you create outside of Organization-owned groups will leave the Organization with you.

\n

That should get your team started

\n

TextExpander for Teams is a pretty powerful way to unlock some wild, time-saving workflows in your Organization. Give some of these tips a try and let us know what you think on our TextExpander contact page, on Twitter @TextExpander, and LinkedIn.

\n", "date_published": "2017-05-03T05:32:11+00:00", "date_modified": "2017-05-16T17:50:32+00:00", "author": { "name": "David Chartier" }, "image": "https://textexpander.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_1321.jpg" }, { "id": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-our-favorite-keyboards-for-mac-pc-ipad-and-iphone/", "url": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-our-favorite-keyboards-for-mac-pc-ipad-and-iphone/", "title": "Our Favorite Keyboards for Mac, PC, iPad, and iPhone", "content_html": "

\"\"

\n

This may come as a surprise, but as the makers of a typing app that helps you to communicate smarter, we here at TextExpander have a thing for keyboards of all shapes and sizes. If you’re curious about how and what we use to type on our Macs, PCs, iPhones, and iPads, you’ve come to the right blog post.

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Keyboards for our Macs & PCs

\n

Let\u2019s start with our daily drivers. As one might expect, a good number of the staff use the keyboard that came in or with our MacBook Pros, desktop Macs, and PCs (did you know we released TextExpander for Windows?). But a number of us ventured beyond the original box to clickier pastures for keyboards, such as:

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Keyboard apps for iOS

\n

When it comes to app keyboards, our options are a smidge more varied. Turns out the TextExpander staff uses some useful, fun, clever, and important stuff on our iPhones and iPads:

\n\n

External keyboard for iPad

\n

Finally, a keyboard can be a great companion for iPads, and the TextExpander staff has a succinct list of favorites there, too:

\n\n

What are your #FavoriteKeyboards? Let us know on Twitter @TextExpander and LinkedIn.

\n", "date_published": "2017-04-28T03:42:29+00:00", "date_modified": "2017-04-28T13:53:04+00:00", "author": { "name": "David Chartier" }, "image": "https://textexpander.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Favorite-keyboards-social-hero-image.jpg" }, { "id": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-tip-how-much-time-have-you-really-saved/", "url": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-tip-how-much-time-have-you-really-saved/", "title": "TextExpander Tip: How much time have you really saved?", "content_html": "

We built TextExpander to help you communicate smarter and save a lot of time typing. But how much time are your text snippets actually saving you? If you work in an organization, how about time saved across everyone on your team? Fortunately, you can check your statistics, complete with a pretty graph!

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How to check your personal TextExpander time saved

\n

Individual TextExpander users can check their statistics on Mac. Simply open the main TextExpander app and click the Statistics button in the toolbar.

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\"\"

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The window that appears displays a few key stats:

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This is a great way to measure and visualize how much good TextExpander is doing for your workflow. For bonus points, there\u2019s a \u201cTweet My Stats\u201d button that makes it easy to share your time saved stats.

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How to check your TextExpander Organization\u2019s time saved

\n

In addition to individual accounts, TextExpander also has Team accounts for organizations, businesses, and groups who want to use their snippets together. In this setting, you can check aggregate statistics for your whole organization to see how much time you\u2019re all saving\u2014yes it is very, very cool.

\n

\"\"

\n

You can learn more about TextExpander statistics for organizations and some of the cool extras we baked in, but in short:

\n\n

Only Admins of the TextExpander Organization have access to these stats. If you don\u2019t have access, but want to know, ask your Admin to post the results to the company Slack. That way, you can all see how you\u2019re doing!

\n

We hope knowing your statistics opens the door to a whole new world of TextExpander appreciation and encourages you to expand more. We’d love to hear your thoughts, so catch us on our TextExpander support page, on Twitter @TextExpander, and LinkedIn.

\n", "date_published": "2017-04-20T06:08:45+00:00", "date_modified": "2017-04-20T11:08:34+00:00", "author": { "name": "David Chartier" }, "image": "https://textexpander.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_1286.jpg" }, { "id": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-one-year-anniversary/", "url": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-one-year-anniversary/", "title": "Raise Your Keyboards to One Year of The New TextExpander", "content_html": "

\"\"

\n

TextExpander has been helping customers to type less and communicate smarter for over a decade. But this month we’re celebrating something special, highlighted on our main Smile Software company blog: the one-year anniversary of a reinvented TextExpander.

\n

In April 2016, we redesigned and rebuilt TextExpander. Technically now at version 6 for Mac, version 4 for iPad and iPhone, and (a first ever!) version 1 for Windows, the new TextExpander is now a hosted service which enables a ton of pretty amazing new features that our customers have requested for years.

\n

Be sure to check out our full post on the Smile Blog to see how far we’ve come in just a year. For some quick nuggets:

\n\n

We invite you to check out our full post on the Smile Blog for all the details. We also thank everyone who helped make such an amazing accomplishment possible, especially our amazing customers, without whom none of this would be possible.

\n", "date_published": "2017-04-13T13:36:16+00:00", "date_modified": "2017-04-13T13:45:02+00:00", "author": { "name": "David Chartier" }, "image": "https://textexpander.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_1277.png" }, { "id": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-tips-text-snippets-for-typing-dates-for-today-the-future-and-yesterday/", "url": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-tips-text-snippets-for-typing-dates-for-today-the-future-and-yesterday/", "title": "TextExpander Tips: Text snippets for typing dates for today, the future, and yesterday", "content_html": "

Once you start using TextExpander for Mac, PC, iPhone, and iPad to communicate smarter, you\u2019ll want to fill it with snippets of text you can type with just a short abbreviation. To help you out, TextExpander comes with a set of snippets. One such snippet touches on something many of us type day in and out: dates. The fun part is, TextExpander has some great tools for letting you customize date formats (that is, January 17, 2021 vs 01/17/21), including automatically inserting dates in the past and\u2026 the future.

\n

\"\"

\n

The Basics

\n

If you don\u2019t have TextExpander yet, grab a free demo for Mac, PC, or iPhone, and iPad. The date snippet that comes with TextExpander can be found in the Sample Snippets group. When you use this snippet (try it by typing \u201cddate\u201d without the quotes), it will automatically type out the current date, and it goes something like this:

\n
abbreviation: ddate\nsnippet: %e %B %Y\nresult: 31 March 2017\n
\n

But what if you prefer three-letter month names, or dashes instead of spaces? What if your company requires a specific date format in all correspondence, or your work involves stating due dates in the future? TextExpander has some killer tools to help here.

\n

The Fun

\n

If you want to create date snippets all your own, open TextExpander on any device. You can either customize our built-in date snippet, or click the (+) button to start from scratch. These snippets are built with snippet codes (like %e, %B, and %Y in the example above), sometimes called \u201cmacros\u201d\u2014a sort of shortcut that tells TextExpander to grab the piece of date that \u201c%+letter\u201d combo refers to. It\u2019s up to you to organize those little codes into an order which produces the full date you want.

\n

Once you\u2019re editing your snippet, check out the buttons on left side of the editing toolbar\u2014the calendar, clock, and calculator:

\n

\"\"

\n
    \n
  1. Use the calendar button on the left to add year, month, and day options
    2. \n
  2. Use the clock button hour, minute, second, and AM/PM
    3. \n
  3. Use the calculator button to harness date math codes, which automatically calculate dates in the past and future
    4. \n
\n

The Examples

\n

Here\u2019s a two-digit day, two-digit month, and four-digit year snippet, separated by dashes:

\n
snippet: %d-%m-%Y\nresult: 28-03-2017\n
\n

Let\u2019s say you often ship items to customers and want to give them a specific date range for when their item should arrive, five to seven days from now. This is where the calculator button and its date math options can come in real handy. For example:

\n
snippet: should arrive between %@+5D%B %e and %@+7D%B %e\u2028    \nresult: should arrive between April 3 and April 5\n
\n

Bonus tip: To quickly preview snippets that use codes like this, tap the eye icon in the top right of the editor.

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TextExpander has a lot of flexibility to help you automate the handling of dates in your correspondence. Be sure to play with these options in the editor, but we also have a code cheat sheet if you prefer.

\n", "date_published": "2017-04-03T05:54:20+00:00", "date_modified": "2017-04-03T05:56:04+00:00", "author": { "name": "David Chartier" }, "image": "https://textexpander.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/IMG_1238.jpg" }, { "id": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-story-how-patrick-rhone-uses-textexpander-to-be-a-better-writer-speaker-and-consultant/", "url": "https://textexpander.com/entry/textexpander-story-how-patrick-rhone-uses-textexpander-to-be-a-better-writer-speaker-and-consultant/", "title": "TextExpander Story: How Patrick Rhone uses TextExpander to be a better writer, speaker, and consultant", "content_html": "

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Welcome to another installment of TextExpander Stories. This is an ongoing series where we talk to interesting folks who want to share how they use TextExpander in their particular field, how it’s impacted their work, and maybe even some unique tips on how they do what they do.

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Hi Patrick Rhone! Please introduce yourself and what you do for a living.

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I\u2019m Patrick Rhone. I\u2019m a writer, speaker, consultant, mindfulness practitioner, and am sometimes described as The Nicest Guy on The Internet. I write in many places, but it’s best to start at my personal site first and that should lead you to the rest.

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And how about what you do for fun?

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I spend time with my daughter, laugh with my wife, play with my dogs, and take not-often-enough hikes.

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What are some of the challenges in your line of work that TextExpander has helped you address? Where has it been most impactful for you?

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Well, it helps me be fairly quick at responding to many emails. I often get a lot of the same questions from clients and readers that have been asked before. TextExpander helps me to have quick but complete replies just a few keystrokes away.

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I often say that if I have to type the same thing more than twice, it belongs in TextExpander.

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If you can remember, think back to your work B.T.E. – Before TextExpander. What were those dark times like?

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I actually started my paid writing career responding to customer service letters in the days before email was a \u201cthing.\u201d Not even macros were in wide use. So, I had a word processor document, several pages long, with all of my standard responses. I would copy and paste from one document to the other to build each letter.

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When email came along I still kept that habit. I kept a text file full of standard responses for emails, and I’d switch back and forth between that document and my email, copying replies over, dozens of times a day. It was tedious and, in hindsight, a massive waste of time.

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Do you remember how you discovered TextExpander?

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I don\u2019t. It was likely mentioned on a podcast or something. Once I found out what it was and what you could do with it, I was sold.

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I\u2019m a big believer in using and learning keyboard shortcuts to save time. To be able to execute paragraphs worth of writing with a few taps is like magic \u2014 huge time saver.

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If you could pick one thing, what would you most like to see improved or added to TextExpander?

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Gosh, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m pretty happy with it and I don\u2019t even use half of the features it has now. I should probably try to learn those first before asking for more.

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Could you share a couple snippets that are specific to your industry?

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“First off, let me apologize for the abysmally slow response. Life gets in the way sometimes and my email is generally the first to take the brunt of the blow.”

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and

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“Thank you for your kind words. Time is an extremely valuable resource so it means a lot to me when someone takes some of theirs to send me feedback and encouragement.

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My best to you.

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Thanks.”

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Can you share a couple of your TextExpander stats?

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I’ve saved 12 hours and expanded 4,067 snippets and 153,600 characters.

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If you’d like to share anything else, this is a great place to do it.

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Be kind.

\n", "date_published": "2017-03-27T08:40:21+00:00", "date_modified": "2017-03-24T13:41:45+00:00", "author": { "name": "David Chartier" }, "image": "https://textexpander.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/TECS-Patrick-Rhone-BnW.jpg" } ] }