Bob Monsour has discovered that signatures go better with Textpander.

Textpander is an app that saves time and effort by storing frequently typed text (or snippets), which you can then insert as you type with a user-defined abbreviation.

Bob tried Apple’s built-in signature feature, but “found it dreadful as the signature seleciton is “out of the way” of my focus when typing and requires selection from a drop-down menu.”

Using Textpander for signatures was the answer.

I use Textpander for signatures too. I find it the most elegant solution, especially if you run multiple aliases on the one account and have to manually select the sig you want from the drop-down menu. Textpander is faster and more efficient.

I also find more and more that I am wanting my sigs outside of Apple Mail in email forms, forum posts, webmail interfaces, in Entourage and so on. With Textpander the signatures are at my fingers tips whether I am in Mail.app or not.

Of course, Textpander does much more than this. Get it from Peter Maurer’s web site and start exploring all the efficiency it offers.productivity, signatures, apple mail, mail.app, tips, textpander

• Paul Heinlein has updated his collection of tips on building and running pine under Mac OS X.
• Paul Stamatiou has written a guide to installing RoundCube on your server. RoundCube is a webmail client with a Mail.app look.
• Apple has published a technote that advises you to “avoid using spaces and the commercial at symbol (“@”) in passwords of iCal calendars that are published to an iDisk or a WebDAV server.” You need to use only letters and numbers.
• Steve Gio joins the select few who are turning their backs on Gmail. He is returning to Mail.app as his main client. Why? Gmail offers no useable way to access email when offline.
• Chris Marsden says some nice things about Hawk Wings (ta very much), where he discovered Peter Maurer and his software. Raves about Witch, Textpander, et al. follow.
• In the Apple Mail Discussions, Tenacious MC wonders why Mail.app “seems to write to com.apple.Safari.plist for some odd reason”. So do I.

pine, mail.app, apple mail, roundcube, gmail, witch, Textpander, safari, ical, passwords, quickies, productivity

Textpander is an app that saves time and effort by storing frequently typed text (or snippets), which you can then insert as you type with a user-defined abbreviation.

The developer has released it recompiled as a universal binary, ready to run on the new Intel Macs.

Textpander is donation-ware and is available from the developer’s web site.

(Witch, a neat window switching utility, has also been released as a universal binary).

Mac OS X’s built-in Services can help you work smarter and faster in Mail.app (and elsewhere).

Third party Services plug-ins offer even more options.

Peter Maurer, creator of Textpander, Witch and other productivity gems, has released a utility that helps you manage your Services menu.

My Services menu is clogged with services from old deleted apps and functions that I will never use. With Service Scrubber I can restructure the menu, change the keyboard shortcuts for each service and even disable unwanted ones.

Service Scrubber is donation-ware and available from Peter’s web site.

UPDATE: As Marc Bizer points out in the comments, you can also use Service Manager, a third-party System Preference plug-in from Blacktree, to manage your services menu, although it has slightly fewer features.

UPDATE: (23 December 2005) Peter has released an updated version of the app (1.1) that finds system-owned services more easily and has some additional features.

Textpander is an app that saves time and effort by storing frequently typed text (or snippets), which you can then insert as you type with a user-defined abbreviation.

An updated version has been released which adds copy and paste support to the snippets list, allowing for easier snippet creation and easier printing of a snippets “cheat sheet”.

It also adds support for iTerm and comes in English, French and German localisations.

Textpander is donation-ware and is available from Peter Maurer’s web site.

Textpander has been updated with some nifty new features.

This time-saving (and finger-saving) utility stores snippets of text and images that you can insert in your typing with user-defined shortcuts. It’s one of my favorite OS X add-ons and saves me lots of time in Apple Mail and elsewhere.

The updated version features as new variable (%clipboard) allowing you to insert whatever is in the Clipboard into your snippets. Sweet.

It now imports snippets from other apps better and works more smoothly with Nisus Writer nlang files. Panther users will be pleased to learn that it now works in 10.3.9 as well. The version also adds French and German localizations.

You can get the updated version from the developer’s web site.