Monday, August 26, 2013

Standard (and not-so-standard) text snippets with TextExpander

I use TextExpander on my Mac to avoid typing standard phrases. For example: at the end of an e-mail, if I type "#br", TextExpander replaces that with a friendly greeting:

best regards 
Philippe 

I have tons of different snippets, for e-mail addresses, street addresses, phone numbers and more. This means I have to type a lot less. But, if each of your e-mails ends with the same polite sentence, people will figure you out. If each e-mail contains the same phrase offering help, it stops sounding helpful after a while.

  "If you have any questions, just let me know."

There is way to fix this. You can have TextExpander call a script instead of just filling out the same text each time. In the TextExpander window, for "Content" select "Script".

Here is a sample script for being helpful:

#!/usr/bin/python
import random

lines=[
"If there is anything else you need, please, let me know.",
"If I can be of any further assistance, please, let me know.",
"If there is anything else I can do for you, please, don't hesitate to let me know.",
"Please, feel free to let me know if you require any further information.",
"If I can be of any further help, please, call or send an email.",
"If I may be of any further assistance, please, let me know.",
"If you require additional information, please, let me know.",
"If you have any additional questions or require further clarification, please, do not hesitate to call me or send me an email.",
"Please, let me know if you require additional information or further clarification regarding this matter.",
"If you have any other questions or would like me to clarify anything else, please, let me know. I am always glad to help in any way I can.",
"Let me know if you need anything else.",
"If you need any other information, just let me know.",
"If you have any questions, just let me know.",
"If I can do anything else for you, just let me know.",
"Call or send an email anytime if you need anything else.",
"If there's anything else you need, just let me know.",
]

size=len(lines)
index=random.randint(0,size-1)
print lines[index]


If you have any experience writing scripts, the options are endless. For instance, could change your automatic template depending on the day or time (Good morning, have a nice weekend, seasons greetings,...).

How do you manage standard phrases? Do you have a tool for this? Do you have a way to dynamically change or rotate phrases? Any crazy ideas or applications for improved dynamic phrases?

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