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BlackBerry AutoText can make your typing life easier. You can turn uncommon text strings into useful, longer strings with just a few keystrokes. Thanks to a tip from BlackBerry Bold 9700 Made Simple, courtesy of BlackBerry Cool, we can also combine some AutoText features to create even longer strings. Your BlackBerry comes with a number of macros, triggered by the percentage sign (%). You can use AutoText to combine these, allowing you to replace two characters of text with strings like time stamps, your name, or even your PIN.

You have the following macros available to use when replacing via AutoText:

Short Date: %d – 12/21/2009
Long Date: %D – Mon, Dec 21, 2009
Short Time: %t – 08:30
Long Time: %T – 08:30:25
Owner Name: %o
Owner Info: %O
Phone Number: %p
Handheld PIN: %P
Backspace: %b
Delete: %B
Version: %v
% character: %%

A number of these macros are readily available on your BlackBerry in any text field. As we mentioned in the AutoText article, you can type mypin to get your PIN, mynumber to get your phone number, myver to get your BlackBerry model and OS version, lt to bring up the long time, ld to bring up the long date, br to open parenthesis, and rb to close them. As you can see, there are a few more options with macros.

To create AutoText entries which use and combine these macros, just go to Options, AutoText, then hit the Menu button and select New. Create a string of text you’d like to replace, and then scroll down to the With field. Press the Menu button and select Insert Macro. You’ll see a dialog box with the above-listed options (though %v is not listed; you’ll have to do that manually). Select the one you want, insert any characters, such as a dash, and then insert another macro. I’m a personal fan of creating a signature AutoText to contain my name, phone number, and PIN.

Anyone else have any macros to add to the list?

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