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If you are anything like me, you love the SureType functionality on your BlackBerry Pearl. I mean this device is really quite smart. Other BlackBerry owners may hate on the fact that the Pearl doesn’t feature a full QWERTY keyboard, but in reality, you do not need all 26 letters of the alphabet on your device in order to type some blazing fast email or SMS messages.
After using the 8700 on a regular basis, the switch to the BlackBerry Pearl has been rather enjoyable. Once I got comfortable with the fact that my new Pearl actually “knew” what I wanted to type before I was done typing, the speed of my data entry increased exponentially.
One thing the SureType fails at however is entering in uncommon words and website addresses. This is not unexpected, as I could not possibly expect the device to know I wanted to type in http://1800realhumanchewingandslurping.com/
Fortunately for Pearl users everywhere, RIM has enabled Auto Text. It is incredibly easy to set up Auto Text so that your BlackBerry will type out a long string of text whenever you enter in a simple short code of your choice. Here is how to do it:
Using Auto Text on your BlackBerry Pearl
- The first step is to navigate to Options – AutoText from your BlackBerry Pearl application screen. You will see a long list of already formatted instructions that are programmed by default into your Pearl. These are all common misspellings of words like “and” and “the”.
- To enter a new Auto Text instruction, press the BlackBerry key beside your Trackball and choose “new” from the menu.
- You will now see 4 fields. The first is replace: Enter in the text that you would like to use as your short code. ie. addy1 (where you would like your full home address to be written out).
- The next field you will see is with: Enter in your full text data here. ie. this is where you will type out your full address so it is associated with the short code you entered above.
- Choose save from the menu and you are good to go.
Now any time you want to type out your full home address, it is as easy as typing addy1. Your BlackBerry Pearl will query the AutoText function and replace any text you have instructed it to.
Go ahead and repeat this process for any long strings of text or uncommon URLs that you may find yourself typing on a regular basis and watch your productivity soar!
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1 Comment ↓
One other thing about Auto Text. There are several “Macros” available that will display information about your device like %o will display what’s entered in the Name field under Options –> Owner Information, and %O will display what’s in the Information field.
I use these to create signature macros which have varying amounts of information I want to convey in my Signature.
For more details about Macros and how I use them for signatures, go to:
http://blackberryforums.pinstack.com/blog.php?b=671
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