A "fruitful" tip for Blackberry Users
Do you type certain phrases, words, or URLs often? Would you like to have a shortcut to typing? If you answered "YES" the AutoText feature is for you!
Use AutoText to assign abbreviations to anything that you type often. For example, you could assign a shortcut of mweb to the web address http://www.MOSTraining.com. In the future when you type your shortcut of mweb in your message and press the spacebar the full web address will appear in your message. Consider creating a library of shortcuts to words and phrases that you type often.
Follow the steps below to practice assigning an abbreviation shortcut of mweb to the URL http://www.MOSTraining.com or anything of your choosing that you would like a typing shortcut for.
While there are several easy steps below just keep in mind that it all begins with the Options icon located on your Blackberry desktop.
Get your Blackberry out and let's get going on these steps. It's worth the time to save lots of time later.
NOTE: This tip will apply to most Blackberry smartphone models old and new. The newer Blackberry models such as the 8800 series have a Trackball rather than a Trackwheel.
Before you start you may find it helpful to view a picture of a Blackberry model that contains the three keys we will be using; Menu, Trackball, and Escape - see Figure1
- Roll the Trackball to the Options icon located on your Blackberry desktop (the wrench icon)
- Press the Trackball (the Options list appears)
- Roll the Trackball to AutoText
- Press the Trackball once (you will see a list of current AutoText entries)
- Press the Menu key (menu key located to left of Trackball)
- Choose New from the menu list (you are now ready to start creating the shortcut and the Replace field should be active)
- In the Replace field type the shortcut you want to use such as mweb
- Roll down to the With field and type what you want mweb to be a replacement for when typed, which in our example will be http://www.MOSTraining.com (Tip: to type a capital letter quickly, press and hold the letter for capitalization to appear)
- Press the Trackball to obtain a Save option
- Press the Trackball on the Save option (this will save your entry and return you to the AutoText listing)
- Press the Escape key twice to return to your desktop (Escape key is located to the right of your Trackball)
Test out your new shortcut:
Compose a message and while in the message type your shortcut, mweb and press the spacebar. Voila! The URL http://www.MOSTraining.com appears.
CAUTION: Do not use abbreviations that are actual words you need. For example, you might want to use the word the in a sentence but if you assigned those three letters as a shortcut to another word you will not be able to use the when needed.
American Society for Training and Development
National Speaker's Association |
