My Favorite Typinator (or TextExpander) Snippets

I know everybody raves about TextExpander from Smile On My Mac, but I got Typinator from Ergonis as a part of a software bundle about a year ago and I've loved it ever since. If you're into using one of these text-expanding utilities, here's a couple of snippets I find invaluable on - quite literally - a daily basis.

• "dt" = {YYYY}.{MM}.{DD} (e.g., 2010.04.25) - This is my go-to for naming files. Just about every file I name in my practice is prefaced with the date in this format. This way, when sorting alphabetically, my files automatically fall into date order.
• "dx" = {M}/{D}/{YYYY} (e.g., 4/25/2010) - This is how I record the date in my billing timesheet. As opposed to the reverse format above, this format is Numbers and Excel friendly, and will be recognized as a date.
• "ttm" = {h12}:{m} {a} (e.g., 12:36 AM) - This inserts the current time. This is very helpful when I'm entering my start and end times into my billing timesheet. Using this, I don't even have to know what time it is - I just hit "ttm" when I start or finish something and it tells the time for me.
  

When I make or take a phone call and want to take notes on it, the first thing I do is type "dt" and "ttm" and automatically the date and time of the phone call are recorded and I don't have to think about it or break my attention from the conversation. Ok now, go and have fun.

Comments

[andonida]

Awesome, I am thinking about purchasing this program. Do you use it for letters, or pleadings? This could be a real time saver.

[EsquireMac]

I use a couple of other snippets for writing letters and pleadings... you can get much more creative with it than I, I am sure. But, I do "ADDD" = my law firm name and address, and "ADDP" = my law firm name, address and phone number. Very handy.

I imagine you can stick entire pleading templates in there, or boilerplate will language and the like...

[Robin Hunt]

I have used TextExpander for a few months. It is very versatile. I use it for several stock e-mail messages with hyperlinks to web materials regularly sent to clients. That said, upon reading about using it to include the date/time format when file naming, as we both do, I had a [smack head] "D'oh" moment.

[Jack Mangan]

Thanks for the tip.....when I googled TE tips, you were top of the list and exactly what I needed. Thanks.

PS: A Mac-based lawyer! I love it!

[Christian]

Hello everyone,

when using the predefined snippets for date and time, TE gives me:

%Y-%m-%d for 2011-04-10 (and not {YYYY}-{MM}-{DD} like mentioned above)

So: Which snippet is the right one actually?