Create short text macros with Autocorrect (InDesign CS2/CS3/CS4)

InDesign is much more user-friendly when it comes to typing text—thanks to the Story Editor—but you might wish for a text macro feature whenever you have to type commonly used words or phrases over and over again. You won’t find this sort of feature in InDesign, but there’s a sneaky way you can get the Autocorrect feature to perform similarly to a macro.

Say, for example, that you have to frequently type the text Adobe InDesign. You can edit your User dictionary in such a way that InDesign inserts the phrase for you.

To create a pseudo text macro:

1. Launch InDesign and choose InDesign > Preferences > Autocorrect (Edit > Preferences > Autocorrect in Windows).
2. Select the Enable Autocorrect check box.
3. Click the Add button located at the bottom of the Preferences dialog box.
4. Enter a couple of letters that you normally wouldn’t type in the Misspelled Word text box.
5. Enter the correct phrase, such as Adobe InDesign, in the Correction text box.
6. Click OK to close the Add To Autocorrect List dialog box, and then click OK to close the Preferences dialog box.
7. Type the letters you added to the Misspelled Word list in your document, press the [spacebar], and then watch InDesign insert the correct words much more quickly than you could’ve typed them!