Tips to fill out forms with TextExpander

[josh.centers]

Snippets can be a great help when filling out forms. I’d like to point out two useful TextExpander macros that can help here.

The first one is Tab, which you can find under the keyboard icon:

You can usually press the Tab key on your keyboard to cycle between fields in a form. Test this out manually before creating the Snippet. Once you have the sequence down, you can insert tabs in the Snippet editor between each piece of content you’d like to fill in. Be sure to not add extra spaces or return characters.

The lesser-known option is arrow macros, which you can find under the cursor icon. These simulate pressing the arrow keys on your keyboard and are especially helpful in navigating dropdown lists in forms.

[ThomasJohnson]

Is there a video or location I can follow up with this.

It looks really promising. (I think)

[ThomasJohnson]

Ive always avoided this section and didnt know really what it can do.

[Christian]

Thanks to this community, I just discovered the arrows two weeks ago, and they’re really great!

[MaguriteWeeks]

Arrow keys! My mind is blown this morning. How cool, am excited to test this out!

[josh.centers]

@ThomasJohnson

Is there a video or location I can follow up with this.

No video yet, but I should make one.

[Christian]

I have a screen recording in another thread of me using this function: How to work with Drop-Down Lists - #5 by Christian

[JeffShapiro]

It would be REALLY nice if you had more cursor positioning controls than just the arrows. I was doing a task that I needed to move the cursor from the current position to the end-of-line. I had to download another program to get that functionality.

[LarrySolesbee]

So how can i select shift+tab?

In quicken i double click the comment field and need to up-arrow to get to the beginning if there is already content, then i have a code for reconciliating, then space, space, then contents of clipboard where i textsniped the balance that matches the statement balance, then two spaces for clarity, then i want to shift tab twice to get back to the tags field where i put in reconciled code R+ last two digits of this account, then return, return to finish transaction, then manually Option+click CLR field to tuen circle green.

So how do i shift+tab?

[TDK]

If on a Mac, you could perhaps try setting up a AppleScript snippet to deploy shift+tab…

tell application “System Events”
delay 0.1
key code 48 using shift down
end tell

You might then be able to nest this snippet within your main snippet whereby you are deploying the keystrokes that Textexpander natively supports.

Edit - Just tried this and it works. You can see the set up below…

And here’s a video of the snippet in action, with the Shift+Tab moving back to the cell with Go in it. I have popped a screen recording online of it in action.

[LarrySolesbee]

@TDK

screen recording online

thanks for jumping on this. Last night claude and i went thru applescript options and kpt having problems with timing for my specific set of keystrokes

I’ll have to try out your clever solution…

But i finally figured out a silution without needing back-tabs…

[TDK]

Always wise to edit your post if the solution you reached out for on is no longer required.

[LarrySolesbee]

Just found the work-around late last night. Hadn’t hsad a chance to get back to this community until i saw your help checking emails first thing today.

But finding a way to shift+tab is still a usable keystroke. I’m interested to try out your suggestion.

i found two solutions.

1. Double click the transaction to enter edit mode, then click EDIT DETAILS that gives the memonoted field where i can click then type the abbreviatin to start the proceaa and the TAGS field is one forward TAB so no shift+tabs are needed.

2. Instead of two shift+tabs, five forward TABs gets me into the same destination

And thanks for lending your coding skills.