Avoid repetitive typing by assigning shortcuts to frequently used phrases

Posted on October 18, 2007 at 7:09 am

PhraseExpress is a very cool application that lets you to save yourself from repetitive typing of phrases by allowing you to save and quickly paste your phrases into any application. The program can be used for a variety of purposes, such as for signatures on emails, addresses, bank account numbers, or for common chat lingo!

Using PhraseExpress, you can assign phrases to shortcut keys or smaller phrases that you define. For example, you can say that “I love you honey” is going to be assigned to the shortcut of Alt + I (hotkey) and you can say that whenever you type the letters “ilu” (autotext), it will be expanded to the full phrase. However, having a different shortcut key for each phrase will end up being way too much to remember, so PhraseExpress allow you to assign multiple phrases to a SINGLE hotkey!

So if you can assign all of your common email signatures to one particular hotkey and simply choose the desired phrase from a popup right next your cursor! Pretty neat!

The Standard edition is free and has all of the functions of the other versions, Professional and Network. The only difference is that Professional can be used for commercial purposes. Once you’ve installed it, you’ll see the PhraseExpress icon in the lower right System Tray:

You can quickly begin storing new phrases while you’re actually typing something. For example, if you’re writing an email and you think you might use that particular phrase again, you can simply select the text, click on the icon in the task bar, and select Create new phrase.

You can paste a phrase into any application in three different ways:

1. Place the cursor at the target location and click on the PhraseExpress icon. Choose the phrase that you want to insert.

2. Press the Hotkey combination that you assigned to the phrase

3. Type in the sequence of letters you assigned in the Autotext box for the phrase

For steps 2 and 3, if there is more than one phrase stored, they will all popup where the cursor is currently located.

There are a tons of other features of PhraseExpress that make the program absolutely essential for anyone who does a lot of typing! It’ll increase your word count and save you from carpal tunnel syndrome!

The program can also be used for filling out web forms also, it is not limited to desktop applications.

[tags]phraseexpress, type less, repetitive typing, common phrases, [/tags]

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Comments

8 Responses to “Avoid repetitive typing by assigning shortcuts to frequently used phrases”

Sridhar Katakam said on : October 18th, 2007 at 9:29 am

Here’s a commercial program that’s similar: http://www.nagarsoft.com/

Currently PhraseExpress does (slightly) more, but Direct Access is prettier and easier to use.

Michael said on : October 18th, 2007 at 3:20 pm

@Sridhar: Your statement is too funny as you actually also seem to prefer PhraseExpress over DirectAccess (http://phraseexpress.com/forum.....hp?t=2268).

But anyway, PhraseExpress is not only far more powerful but also cost nada. And I do not need a flashy UI at cost of a whopping 30MB download for DirectAccess while PhraseExpress only requires less than 2MB

Michael

Sridhar Katakam said on : October 18th, 2007 at 9:30 pm

Michael: I agree w/ you that PE is free for personal use and hence should be the preferred program to use.

Personally, since I’ve obtained DA for free and have 2GB RAM, I use it on my office laptop. If that were not the case, I would have just been devoted to PhraseExpress.

I also use DA (on my desktop). I like both the programs as they have their own strengths.

Frank said on : October 19th, 2007 at 3:05 pm

Shridar, so why making advertisement for a commercial program which looks like a poor rip-off?

I don’t understand your motivation except trying to spam.

Frank

Sridhar Katakam said on : October 19th, 2007 at 9:36 pm

Frank,

I don’t agree w/ you calling DA a poor rip-off.

In my opinion, both are good programs and I just shared that info w/ everyone over here. I don’t see why it’s called ’spamming’. If it is so as per this blog’s author, then it’s up to him to delete my comments.

Again, I use both the programs and make suggestions and participate in the forums for both.

Frank said on : October 20th, 2007 at 2:29 am

I just can see that PhraseExpress is a nice Freeware and you are posting a link to a commercial $40 program which does even LESS. I call it spamming.

If you refer to the launcher features of DirectAccess why don’t you post it relating to launcher applications (or will you start to make antivirus program suggestions in this thread as well???).

Frank

Sridhar Katakam said on : October 20th, 2007 at 3:13 am

Thanks Frank. You’ve just lost one user (Not sure whether you care or not). With such an attitude of the author/owner, I’ll never use your program (PhraseExpress) again.

To everyone: PhraseExpress as a program is quite nice freeware (for personal use). I highly recommend it (as I do Direct Access).

Frank said on : October 20th, 2007 at 10:30 am

Huh? I am not PhraseExpress and I just don’t care what YOU are using. Go wherever you want to go. Really!

Just refrain from doing comment spam.

Frank