AutoTyper FAQ
- AutoTyper is changing the font when it does an expansion.
You need to set the Expand Type of your abbreviations to be Plain text. You can do this for each individual abbreviation, or you can do it at the Group level. Unfortunately, if you need rich text, there is no way to restore the previous font. If your expansion consists of rich text with only an image, and no text, not even spaces, most programs will not change the font. For those that do, you can avoid this by setting the Expand Type to be image.
- Can I import my abbreviations from other programs? There is a TextExpander import which can import your entire Settings.textexpander, as well as other .textexpander files. (At the time of writing, date/time tokens are not supported, but will be soon). Unfortunately, Typinator does not play nice, and seems to deliberately make their config files obscure, and provides no export. There is also a CSV plaintext import/export routine.
- Why doesn't AutoTyper work? By default (you can change this), AutoTyper only expands after you type a delimiter like space. That's the most common reason people don't find it working.
- Why doesn't expansion happen after or before a
parenthesis? ()
Any character that exists in an abbreviation is not considered a delimiter. By default, AutoTyper ships with some smiley abbreviations :-) and :-( etc. To get expansion to happen with abbreviations that ajoin these characters you have to either remove, change or disable the abbreviation for these smileys. You can see what delimiters have been disabled by opening Edit Default Delimiters in the AutoTyper Settings tab.
- Why do my expansions seem to happen twice? This probably means you are running more than one typing expansion program at the same time. Switch off the other program. Otherwise try restarting Automaton/AutoTyper and see if it still happens. You might also consider turning off Snow Leopard's built-in spelling correction. In your application, go to Edit ▶ Spelling and Grammar ▶ Correct Spelling Automatically. Make sure this option is unchecked.
- Why do I get the current value of the Pasteboard, instead
of the correct expansion?
The most common reason for this is you are running some other pasteboard program that is interfering with AutoTyper.
The other possibility is that Typing Expansion programs work by putting the expansion into the Pasteboard, pasting it and then restoring the Pasteboard. This has some timing dependancy. Try going into the AutoTyper Settings tab, and increasing the Restore Pasteboard after value, or turning it off altogether. If you still get the same behaviour, email support and give us more information.
- Why doesn't AutoTyper paste [colors, images, fonts]? There are two Expand Type modes, Plain and Rich. Only Rich mode remembers colors, fonts and images. Rich mode can be set as the global default, the Group default or the mode for an individual abbreviation. Individual modes override the Group, and the Group overrides the global default. Usually the best thing is to choose a mode for the Group, and set the individual abbreviations to default(.).
- Why doesn't text expansion work in [name app here]?
Expansion should in theory work in any application that you can
paste into from the Pasteboard. i.e. from which you can Command-V
paste into.
- MS-Word does not accept pasting images into it. That makes it a bad Mac citizen, and thus AutoTyper images can't be pasted into MS-Word.
- Thunderbird pastes come out in plaintext even if they should be rich text. Thunderbird is a bad Mac citizen. This is because Thunderbird does not accept RTF pastes. This is the rule of thumb: if you app does not accept rich text pastes from TextEdit, then it won't from AutoTyper either (and probably won't from any other Mac app.
- Spell-Checker is a program that runs in the background and does some rather unfriendly things that interfere with AutoTyper. You will need to turn it off to use AutoTyper.
- There can be issues running AutoTyper in conjunction with various remote desktop products, especially if you are running AutoTyper on both your local AND remote machines.
- Try using abbreviations with both Rich and Plain text. AutoTyper's method of expansion is a bit different, and in stubborn programs you may find one works where the other doesn't
- Other programs that interfere with the pasteboard could in theory interfere. If you find a conflict with another program, let us know.
These are the things I will be asking you if you have a problem:
- Do you have Enable access for assistive devices turned on in System Preferences, Universal Access checked? This is necessary to run AutoTyper.
- Is your AutoTyper configuration checked as "Run" in Preferences?
- In Settings on the AutoTyper Dialog, does it indicate that it is running?
- Have you changed the Application Group settings such that expansions don't happen in all applications?
- Have you disabled any abbreviations or abbreviation groups?
- Try turning off any other typing or clips type applications.
- Try various applications. Try TextEdit, Mail, Pages, etc.
- Some applications like Mail and TextEdit have both Rich text and Plain text modes. If expanding images, make sure it is in the Rich mode.
- Try creating temporarily a brand new user account in System Preferences -> Accounts. Login to the other account, start AutoTyper, and try pasting into TextEdit (with Format rich text mode, if doing images). This will tell you if the problem is related to something else running in your user account.
- If you have access to another machine, try it there.
By supplying as much information as possible it improves the chances of solving your problem. If you find another program AutoTyper doesn't work with, we are more than happy to look into it and see if anything can be done. If we are unable to repeat the problem you are having, we can try to work with you to try and find out why, but be warned that it will require patience on your part. If you can allow us to see what is happening via some screen sharing, that can help a lot.
- AutoTyper sometimes stops working until I reboot the computer! There is a bug in some applications (Firefox at least, possibly other browsers) whereby the password field is disabling external typing extensions (as a security measure), and forgetting to re-enable it again. Tabbing out of the password field releases it, but clicking into your account does not and AutoTyper stays locked out until the tab is closed. The same bug affects all typing expansion programs. When you sign into a password website, don't leave the cursor in the password field. Tab back to the userID before clicking the login button. Close the tab and/or browser with the password field.