Quick Guide: Using AutoText To Make Typing On BlackBerry Easier & Faster (Bonus Tips!)

By Mauricio

AutoText on BlackBerry smartphones is often a dismissed or underestimated feature even though if used correctly it can increase a user’s productivity and typing speed. What does AutoText do? Simple: It replaces text with pre-defined or custom created text. The pre-defined text are loaded on a BlackBerry by default and are usually for correcting commonly misspelled words or “shortcut text” that’s replaced with info. For example, “myver” is replaced with your BlackBerry’s model number and operating system version.

This guide will help you learn how to create and edit AutoText items on your BlackBerry so you can increase your typing speed by typing less.

1. Find the Options icon in the Application list and click into it.
2. Once you’re in the Options screen scroll down to AutoText and click into it.
3. You’re now in the AutoText screen where you can see, create and edit AutoText items.
   • Take a minute to scroll through the AutoText items and become familiar with what’s available. What you might have wanted to create might already exist.
   • As you’ll notice, most of the AutoText items are for incorrectly spelled words like “htis” is replaced with “this”, “htey” is replaced with “they”, etc.
   • Besides for incorrectly spelled words there are also AutoText items that replace words requiring punctuation. For example, “id” is replaced with “I’d”, “itll” replaced with “it’ll”. You will soon learn why the “i” in “id” was capitalized when replaced with “I’d”.
4. Open the menu while in the AutoText screen and select New.
5. You can now create a custom AutoText item. For this guide we used “bbr” replaced by “www.blackberryrocks.com” as an example.
6. In the Replace field type the word, abbreviation, code, whatever, that you would like replaced.
7. In the With field type what you want to replace the word in the Replace field.
8. Selecting the right option in the Using drop down menu:
   1. Smartcase: This option replaces the text as is meaning “itll” will always be replaced with “it’ll” unless it is at the beginning of a sentence (or other appropriate context), in which case it is replaced with “It’ll”.
   2. Specified Case: This option replaces the text with a specified case, meaning the text that replaces the original text will not change based on where the word is used or proper spelling, etc. An example would be typing a web address starting with “www”. If you starting typing the web address first, the “Www” will be replaced with “www” even though it is at the beginning of a sentence. Specified Case ignores the location and proper capitalization of a word according to the specified settings.
9. The Language drop down lets you select which languages you want the AutoText rules to apply to.
10. To edit an AutoText item simply highlight it, open the menu and select Edit. You can also delete items this way.

Keep in mind that when using AutoText you have to “break” after the word that is to be replaced. For example, pressing the space button or in a URL pressing the period to continue typing so “Www” turns into “www.”.

BONUS TIPS!

Like I said earlier, using AutoText makes typing on BlackBerry easier and faster. Here are some tips on how to use the AutoText function in different ways:

• You can make up your own abbreviations or “code” to replace with your specified text.
• You can create AutoText items for email addresses. For example, “mymail” can be replaced with “[email protected]”. This is useful for whenever you need to input email addresses in message bodies instead of the To/From fields.
• If you decide you don’t want to download apps that use special characters you can send them to yourself (or have a friend send them) and add them to the AutoText. If you follow us on Twitter then you’ve probably seen me use the simple black and white happy face instead of the emoticon used in BlackBerry messages. You can copy this happy face into AutoText and then use a word like “smiley” to get replaced by it.
• In the same way for inputting special characters in Twitter you can do the same for SMS or BlackBerry Messenger messages. Here is an example where I replace “tgif” with a little guy a friend created:

I hope you all found this guide useful and that it increases your typing speed / productivity while on your BlackBerry smartphone. If you think of any other tips or fun uses of the AutoText function feel free to leave them in the comments!