Comments on: Hidden Autoexpand Feature in InDesign

By: Josh Freeman

Josh Freeman — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:02:13 +0000

I am having consistent repeatable crashes of ID CS3 when TextExpander automatically expands something in another app while ID is hidden. Weird! Anybody else have this happen?

By: Igor Freiberger

Igor Freiberger — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:35:37 +0000

I use Autocorrect to type several Law expressions since 2005. It’s not the Word’s AutoText, but it improves typing a lot anyway.

I also took the Autocorrect list from Word and inserted it on ID.

There is a bug: ID changes the code to the desired word when you follow the code by space, dot, and colon. But not semi-colon, parentesis or brackets. So, I type code+dot, get the word, tip Backspace and go.

I’m also using diactric characters from Latin-based languages and German as the ‘correct’ word without problem. Things like noël, não, años or über works correctly.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:36:48 +0000

Christopher, that is very clever. But you might want to read through Pariah's 6-part series on making underlines. Using actual underscore characters can be problematic.

By: Eugene Tyson

Eugene Tyson — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:02:52 +0000

If anyone ever changed my autocorrect fields like this I’d go crazy, I wouldn’t be impressed at all.

However, it is quite fun to set up someone’s computer to play a sound everytime they hit a certain key. You could record a belch, or you could record a word or phrase, like someone calling them from a distance, they always go, “Who keeps calling me?” Now that is comedy!

By: Christopher S.

Christopher S. — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 02:21:32 +0000

Oh and don’t forget how much fun you can have if you can sneak in and access your CO-WORKER’s autocorrect list.

Set it up so that when he types the boss’s name, it gets “corrected” (i.e., John Smith becomes John Snith, etc.)

Or if you want to be less devious but still have fun, set it up so it exchanges the indefinite articles ‘a’ and ‘an.’

By: Christopher S.

Christopher S. — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 02:14:22 +0000

I typeset forms and medical records for a hospital here in New Orleans. I’ve got my autocorrect set up to make blank lines of various lengths, using underscores. For instance, for a short blank that might be used for a single number or checkmark, I type ‘xx’ and ID converts that to three underscores. ‘xxx’ produces 8 underscores, ‘yy’ gives me 15 underscores, ‘yyy’ is 22, etc.

I was originally creating my underscores / blank lines using tabs with underscore leaders. But what happens is: our forms are constantly changing and being revised by different doctors or medical staff. And every time you change the wording, you have to adjust the tabs so the blank line is the same length as before.

By: Klaus Nordby

Klaus Nordby — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 23:37:01 +0000

Anne-Marie, it’s all due to your weird American keyboard, with those wacky character locations. Now, if you only had a Norwegian one, then . . .

By: Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:27:47 +0000

oh gosh I forgot all about that Autocorrection tip! LOL.

I tried adding special characters via their XML or HTML entities (ampersand-abbreviation-semicolon) to the .xml file itself, but InDesign didn’t like it. ;-( Ah well, I was just happy to see that spaces and period and quotes etc. worked fine. I *think* it refuses to take any character that requires an Option/Alt keypress.

Characters requiring the Shift key are usually okay; with some exceptions. The characters above the number line (dollar symbol, asterisk, etc.) work fine, as do the brackets and braces, question mark (but not the forward slash), and back slash (but not the pipe).

Less than and Greater than symbols won’t work (through the comma and period are okay), neither do any of the characters in the two keys either side of the number line (tilde/accent and plus symbol/equal symbol).

Interestingly, both the colon and semi-colon work fine.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 19:33:03 +0000

What I find annoying is that you cannot use a wide variety of special characters (including double-byte characters) in the autocorrect expanded text. Also, Anne-Marie, we shouldn't forget the great use of autocorrect you mentioned in podcast episode 58.

By: Bob Levine

Bob Levine — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:29:41 +0000

Sorry, should be:

C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\InDesign\Version 5.0\Autocorrect

We need an edit button.