Text expanders are the magical productivity tool you need to master

Imagine if we told you that you could reduce the most tedious hours to one-third of the original one? If you will answer "My boss will only let me do other jobs", you may be right. There is nothing we can do about this. But we can help you improve the efficiency of sending emails, data entry, and any other tasks that require you to enter repetitive, formulaic text throughout the day. How to do it? Text extender. These nearly invisible automation applications allow you to quickly insert text snippets, automate certain aspects of data entry, and overall improve your workflow efficiency. They may only save you a few seconds per mission, but that time adds up to a lot. Not only can you easily browse spreadsheets, but all this repetitive work will also put less stress on your brain, making it easier for you to complete your daily to-do list.

Purpose of text expander

Text extenders occupy a unique space in the vast productivity tool type that almost everyone can benefit from, but their use cases are very personal, so it is difficult to explain exactly why they are useful. It takes some effort to figure out how they fit into your workflow, but once you do it, they are indispensable. With that in mind, here are some examples of how text extenders can help you work:

### Automatically fill in repeated email clips

If you're sending emails all day, the snippet feature of most text extenders can help. These are blocks of text that you can assign to a small number of keys. So, every time you need to ask your customer to pay an invoice, without typing a new email every time, you can save the text of the first email as a snippet and quickly insert it into subsequent similar emails. Since this method of saving text is more modular than a full email template, for example, you can break down recurring emails into sections and add different sections as needed.

[Related: 6 Tips for Writing Non-Spam Email]

Customize your email signature based on your conversation subject

Email signature is a useful way to get people to know your information without making your email unbearable. However, you may want clients to get different information than colleagues, or you may prefer to use more professional signatures for colleagues than friends. By creating different signatures and assigning them to different abbreviations (like "sig1" or "sig2"), you can customize your emails without adding a lot of extra work to yourself.

Instant calculation of expiration dates and other important data

Some text extenders include smart macro editing, for example, which can automatically enter certain data into your fragments. Suppose, you want to send an email to tell someone that the payment period is two weeks later today. You can view your calendar and find the exact date yourself, or you can use math macros to automatically add 14 days to the current date when using the fragment. This not only saves you input time, but also calculates it for you every time. Computers are good at mathematics! Let them do it!

### Automatically more normal errors (regular automatic correction of uncaught errors)

Your computer may notice you're spelling errors, but you may see red wavy lines under a proper noun or proprietary word. If you want to make sure you never accidentally misspel the boss's name, Mr. Bart, you can add it to your text extender so that if you accidentally enter something else, it will automatically correct you. While you can use the computer's built-in autocorrect feature for this, a text extender is better when working with others, because you can:

### Share your clip with everyone else on the team

Many text extenders allow you to share and synchronize shortcuts you create with everyone else on your team (although teams are usually paid features), so you can not only stop yourself from spelling the boss’s name, but also ensure others are also able to ensure that you don’t just have to. It won't spell it wrong, either.

These are just some of the many ways you can use text extenders to be more productive, but – like most productivity applications – it’s better to look at your personal daily routine and see when they can help. You know your workflow better than anyone else, so if you are used to doing some repetitive tasks over and over again, check if you can uninstall that work to a text extender.

Your favorite text extender

Text extenders are second only to to-do lists and email applications in terms of the number of options on the market. If one app doesn't work exactly the way you want it to, there's a good chance that there's another app that works better. We'll outline some of the most prominent options here, but there are many others.

TextExpander

As an old-fashioned app, TextExpander remains one of the easiest to use, supporting Windows, macOS, Chrome (browser and operating system) and iOS, and synchronizing clips on all of these platforms. It has a lot of features for managing teams, including the ability to share clips with colleagues and the permissions system for managing who can edit which clips.

TextExpander also allows you to create fill-in-the-blank clips that will create a pop-up window asking you to fill in any variables you build into, such as the name or price information of a person. This will be especially handy if you send a lot of most of the same emails but still need to change some information.

This is a paid app that starts at $3.33 per user per month (billed annually), or $8.33 per user per team and above (again, annually). If you want to understand how it works before spending your money, you can get a 30-day free trial of two lower-level products.

TextExpander On Windows, macOS, Chrome, and iOS, individual users start at $3.33 per month.

### PhraseExpress

PhraseExpress is a better competitor to TextExpander, which provides a large number of macro and scripting features that allow you to automate basic tasks such as starting applications or opening web pages. It even has a companion macro recorder that allows you to record repeated actions that you perform and then convert them into actions that the application can perform repeatedly with a single button. You can view a complete list of PhraseExpress features here.

PhraseExpress uses free software mode, which is completely free for individual users. The company requires that if you use the app for any commercial use, you will need to purchase a lifetime license (starting at around $47), but if it is not sold, the company will not prevent you from using the app. If you use certain paid features, it will only bother you, even then only after the first 30 days of using the app. If you want to try to incorporate a text extender into your workflow, but aren't sure if you're ready to pay for it, this is a great application.

PhraseExpress Enterprise users on Windows, macOS and iOS are free to use.

aText

As with other applications on the list, aText allows you to create clips for text blocks, autocorrections, and images, and has scripting capabilities to generate dates or automate keystrokes. While other applications will sync data for you through their own servers, aText can sync data through storage that you control (such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or iCloud), if you want to use a text extender in a more autonomous way, this May be attractive.

[Related: How to Work from Home Without Reducing Productivity]

This tool is for Windows systems and is completely free. Completely free, no free software, no trial period. If you want to use it on your Mac, you will have to pay $5. Even if you choose the paid method, aText is one of the cheapest ways to enter text extension. It's not available on all platforms (Windows and macOS only), but it's a good entry point if you don't need to manage teams or design extremely complex text extension scripts.

aText Windows system is free, macOS system is $5.

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