Make Butler write text for you
Standardized replies, phone and mail contact information, text snippets … There is a lot of text we have to write over and over again.
There is no need for that. Butler’s custom pasteboards come to save you. Write no more!
We already used Butler’s pasteboard to create a multi item clipboard. Today we will explore, how we can set up Butler to write text for us.
We will use Mac Kindergarten’s signature for this tutorial, but it can be any text you want.
Setup
1) First we need to get the text on the clipboard. Open up the text editor TextEdit (Applications/TextEdit.app).
2) Write the text you want Butler to write for you. In our case that would be this:
Mac Kindergarten | www.mackindergarten.com
Tutorials and How-Tos for Mac Starters
3) Highlight the entire text (command-A) and copy it to the clipboard (either command-C or from the Edit menu, select Copy). You can quit TextEdit now, we don’t need it any longer.
4) Open up Butler’s preferences.
To open up Butler’s preferences window, click the computer icon in the menu bar, select Butler > Preferences.
Alternatively, you can bring up Butler’s abbreviation window, by pressing control-space. Once the window is visible, press command - , (comma) to bring up the preferences (as you bring up the preferences in any other application).
5) Go to the Configuration tab and click the plus sign in the lower left corner to add a new Smart Item.
6) Pick Smart Item > Pasteboard > Custom Pasteboard
7) A new item is created and the text from the clipboard is inserted automatically. Change the name from Custom Pasteboard into something more descriptive, say, Mac Kindergarten - Signature.
Switch over to the Triggers tab to configure custom keyboard shortcuts, Hot Corners (as described here) or assign an custom abbreviation to it.
Usage
If you don’t assign an abbreviation to it, you’ll still be able to find it in Butler’s abbreviation window (which you bring up with control-space).
Simply start to type the name of the item (a custom pasteboard in this case) and Butler will find it for you. Faster than you think :)
You don’t even need to write the entire name. Entering macsig, for example, is enough for Butler to recognize it. Butler does a really decent job on finding out what you want. Like a real butler.
So, anywhere you can enter text (on a web form, in an email, in an IM message, …) you can use this custom pasteboard and make Butler write for you. This also prevents you from making mistakes on text you write often.
A huge time saver that also makes sure, you provide correct information. Great, huh?
Email This Post
Tags: Butler, clipboard, freeware, IM, Mail, productivity, shortcuts
Related posts: