I’m running into a persistent issue with snippet formatting and would love some advice.
Often, I’ll compose a nicely formatted email, with headings, consistent fonts, and clean structure, and then decide it would make a great snippet. When I copy it into TextExpander, I always choose Match Font, Match Font Size, and Match Font Color. Always.
The snippet itself looks great in TextExpander, but when I expand the snippet in Outlook, for example, parts of the text still show up in different fonts or styles. Since we can’t directly access or clean up the underlying HTML in TextExpander, I’ve been forced to copy everything into another program to strip the formatting before pasting it back in. This works, but it’s slow and adds a lot of extra steps.
How are others ensuring their snippets expand with completely consistent formatting from top to bottom? Are there best practices or workflows you’ve found helpful? Are there plans to allow us to access the underlying HTML in snippets, or even an option to strip superfluous HTML from snippets?
The attachment is a perfect example of inconsistent formatting. There was no extra HTML in this snippet, but expanding it into Outlook shows a different story. First paragraph font is formatted differently from bulleted list, etc.
I also have not had success in having inserted snippets match the size and font despite choosing the Match options. I’m looking forward to others who might have suggestions. Thanks!
I recall experiencing this issue in the past, but have not for some time. I am following this thread because I am curious to see what the fix is in case it happens again. Best of luck with a solution, Christian!
Hey Christian, Thanks for the detailed post and screenshot. When you copy the content into TextExpander, what’s the Content Type you have set? Is it Rich or Plain text?
That seems to have done the trick. The only bad news is that I now need to go through all my snippets, strip formatting (and embedded links) by switching them to plain text, and then reapply formatting. This will take a lot of work, but I can do that one-by-one.
Thanks for trying that Christian. Our rich text editor is bringing in the formatting from wherever you copied it from, which in this case, is not what you want.
You should be able to highlight the text, and select Match Font and Match Size options, which should also remove the formatting.
I agree, that’s a time consuming task on your part.
Would a Clear Formatting button be helpful to you? or a "Code” style view where you could get a view into the formatting that’s being applied to the snippet? Would appreciate your feedback.
If the Match Font/Size/Color options worked as intended, I imagine the Code and Clear Formatting buttons wouldn’t be necessary. I’ve always assumed the Match options were meant to function as a kind of lightweight “clear formatting” by removing any stray or problematic HTML behind the scenes, but I defer to you on what their actual purpose is.
That said, I did paste the snippets in from a plain text editor, but it looks like some hidden code still made it through.
To answer your questions: I’m comfortable working with code, so a Code View toggle would definitely be helpful - even just to serve as a peace of mind that i’m doing everything correctly if something doesn’t look quite right. That said, I recognize that some folks either aren’t familiar with HTML or simply don’t have time to clean up messy code, especially the very messy kind that gets dragged in from Word, so a one-click Clear Formatting option would be a great alternative or welcome addition to the Code View toggle.
I have also had trouble with the formatting in snippets not coming out as expected. Lists and nested lists often don’t come out right and links don’t work when you use the iphone version of text expander And send an email. I would be very grateful for any improvements to the editor. it’s my biggest issue with text expander.
But I haven’t had trouble with match font and match size. My understanding of match font and match size is that when you paste a snippet in it will match the font and size of the document it’s being put into, not that it matches the font in size of what you paste in when you create it. So if I’m in Gmail using Arial size 14 when I put in a snippet that has match font and match size it will paste in the same font face and size that I was already using. All my snippets are set to Formatted text.
I hope that is helpful. If I am misunderstanding the problem, please let me know.
I have also had a lot of trouble with the lists and bullets. Sometimes a bullet will get nested for some reason and I cannot unnest it. I using mostly inserting in salesforce with the match font/size etc and overall it works but for numbered or bullets i seem to run into issues.
We are continuing to investigate this issue and we believe it’s related to how Outlook and other Microsoft products handle pasting.
To make your snippet formatting expand more reliably, here’s a recorded a quick walkthrough showing how to adjust some key settings in both Word and Outlook:
And if you’d prefer to follow along with written steps, here’s what to do:
(Please bear in mind, there are multiple versions of Office products, so your settings may look a bit different, and you may need to do a little exploring to find simliar settings in your version)
How to Disable Smart Features and Set Paste Defaults in Microsoft Word & Outlook
In Microsoft Word
Open Word Options
Select Advanced options
Disable Smart Paragraph & Cursor Behavior
Scroll down to the Cut, copy, paste section
Set Pasting from other programs to “Keep Source Formatting”
Turn Off Smart Cut and Paste
Save Changes
In Microsoft Outlook
Open Outlook Options
Open Editor Options
Select Advanced options
Disable Smart Paragraph & Cursor Behavior
Scroll down to the Cut, copy, paste section
Set Pasting from other programs to “Keep Source Formatting”
Turn Off Smart Cut and Paste
Save Changes
If you’re able to, give that a try and let me know if that fixes your issue. We appreciate everyone’s feedback on this issue.
The screen recording appears to be on a Mac, but on a different version of MS Office than i’m on. I’m using O365, and my options are quite different. The closest option in Outlook I could find was what is attached.
Hey @Christian, thanks for troubleshooting this with me. And apologies for the late reply, I was out of office last week. It looks like the pasting options are not available on the latest version of Outlook for Mac.
It does look like switching Outlook to the legacy version might restore those paste settings. I know that’s not optimal. I will bring this back to the team to research further.
Thanks again for raising this issue. We appreciate it.
This is your space to ask questions, find support, and share ideas with fellow TextExpander users and our product team. As a first step, take a moment to introduce yourself to the community.
Watch here: 
How to Disable Smart Features and Set Paste Defaults in Microsoft Word & Outlook
In Microsoft Word
In Microsoft Outlook
