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Pratik Patel

Are there any accessible apps on Windows that allow you to create text macros? I'm finding myself typing a particular phrase or two while doing something. I'd like to avoid typing all this.

@ppatel Take a look at Textexpander. It’s available on Mac with an electron-like UI, and I vaguely recall it being the same on Windows. It truly enables you to create potent text macros, including conditionals and fill-ins. I used to send out a fairly standardized email with three key details that changed every time. So, a text expander macro would pop up with my defined fields to be filled in. I filled them in, pressed Enter, and it opened my email client, composed a new email, pasted in an address, tabbed to the subject field, added the customized subject, tabbed to the message contents, pasted in the message with its personalized details, and simultaneously added my formatting, hyperlinks, and (if I had been foolish and courageous) Ctrl-Enter to send the message. Although I preferred to proofread my email first. Textexpander can also perform simple tasks like .adr and expand it to your address, and so on.

@jakobrosin I was under the mistaken assumption that Text expander was only for macOS. I learned otherwise earlier today. I'll look at it along with Autohotkey. It seems like a good solution too.

@ppatel @jakobrosin What? We can use Text Expander on Windows? Filing under "I was today years old".

@acarson @ppatel we indeed can. Its a lovely piece of software if you set it up correctly and carefully

@jakobrosin @acarson It looks really good from my quick look. With NVDA, we have to use tab/shift tab to navigate the interface or use the objpad add-on to use the scan mode. The only thing I can't seem to do successfully so far is assign hot keys to several functions. The thing sits in systray so the functions are available there.

@ppatel I used Text Expander on Windows fairly recently. I didn't have any issues where it would freeze, though it does sometimes forget to react when you trigger a snippet. There may be a fix, but that machine was a work machine and they took away the app so I'm not sure.

@lakhesis Thanks for the confirmation that Text Expander works. I was just given an open source alternative called Espanso.

@ppatel Sure! I saw Espanso a few weeks ago while I was hunting for TE alternatives. I hope it works for you.

@ppatel Leasey if you use JAWS; AutoText if in Word; AutoHotKey for general use all over.

@DeanEquity I was looking at Autohotkey. I don't use JAWS so it's not an option. I was also recommended Espanso (espanso.org), which is an open source alternative to Tex Expander.

espanso.orgEspanso - A Privacy-first, Cross-platform Text Expander

@ppatel I did not realize that NVDA can't work with AutoHotKey.

@DeanEquity Sorry. I see how that confusion happened. My mistake in writing it the way I did. I should have said that I don't use JAWS so Leasy isn't an option. Autohotkey does work with NVDA.

@ppatel Alternatively, a bit of hacking in NVDA could laos do it. It's also easy to do with JAWS scripting.

@mcourcel I hardly ever use JAWS these days. And, I'd rather not do something with NVDA unless there's no option. AutoHotKey will be the perfect solution I think. Thank you.

@ppatel So, you do mashups correct? These 2 theme songs have similar traits, but not sure if a mash-up could be done. First, Scare crow and Mrs. King: youtube.com/watch?v=vxkDUeW3wm Mushed up with Murder She wrote: youtube.com/watch?v=Ir5czCiOps

@mcourcel Hmm. I'm not much into doing that. But, this doesn't seem possible unless some changes are made.