Problems disabling autocorrect to prevent converting "(A)" to "@"

[Ken Hjulstrom]

Hi,

I was surprised to see "@" appear when I typed "(A)" into my Publisher document, as I actually wanted the characters "(A)" to appear.  I learned that this conversion was part of the default autocorrect settings, so I tried the following to prevent the conversion from happening:

1. In the autocorrect settings, I changed the conversion from "(A)" to "@" to "[A]" to "@" (parentheses to square brackets).  This didn't work, even after closing my document and Publisher and reopening my document.
2. In the autocorrect settings, I removed the conversion from "(A)" to "@", so neither "(A)" nor "[A]" entry was present, closed my document and Publisher and reopening my document.

Am I misunderstanding something here, or could this be a bug?  I did find a workaround by inserting a zero-width space on both sides of the "A", which apparently caused the autocorrect rule to no longer match, but I'm interested in the "right" way to handle this.

Thanks,

Ken

 

[Alfred]

I’m surprised that your attempted prevention measures didn’t work, but any time you get an unwanted autocorrection you can undo it by immediately pressing Cmd+Z on Mac or Ctrl+Z on Windows.

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, Ken Hjulstrom said:

In the autocorrect settings, I changed the conversion (…) This didn't work, even after closing my document and Publisher and reopening my document.

Just in case: The languages of both the auto-correction setting + the text have to be the same to make the auto-correction setting affect the text.

[Old Bruce]

I can understand using (tm) for ™   (c) for ©  But there is no excuse to have a @ symbol in the Autocomplete set, just remove it.

So you type three keys instead of typing the one key to get the Autocomplete to do it....

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

I can understand using (tm) for ™   (c) for ©  But there is no excuse to have a @ symbol in the Autocomplete set, just remove it.

I tried removing the @ shortcut from autocomplete but I had to quit & restart APub for this to take effect.

I agree, it should not be there in the first place, unless maybe the keyboard does not have a way to enter an @ symbol directly?

EDIT: this was with the Mac 1.0.4 retail version of APub. I just checked using instead the 1.0.5.1214 Mac beta & even after restarting that app several times, typing "(a)" still auto-miscorrects it to an @ symbol.

[Old Bruce]

I hadn't thought of a missing @ symbol on the keyboard. This shows up in the UK English and the vanilla English preferences but is missing (along with everything else, which suits me) from my Canadien English.

[R C-R]

4 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

I hadn't thought of a missing @ symbol on the keyboard. This shows up in the UK English and the vanilla English preferences but is missing (along with everything else, which suits me) from my Canadien English.

FWIW, the Apple U.S. English keyboards have the @ symbol as the shifted 2 key.

[Old Bruce]

I am not sure if there is a French Canadien Keyboard for sale, what I have is the Anglo Canadien version which is the same as the U.S. Keyboard.

[R C-R]

8 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

I am not sure if there is a French Canadien Keyboard for sale, what I have is the Anglo Canadien version which is the same as the U.S. Keyboard.

Aside from that, if you delete the auto-correct for (a) in APub on your Mac, does that eliminate the correction immediately, or do you have to quit & restart the app for that to work? Also, if you have the latest APub beta, does it work there, either with a restart or immediately after removing the (a) entry? For me, it does not work at all in the beta.

[Old Bruce]

Delete using the remove button makes it stop right away in both the current retail version and the Beta.

[R C-R]

7 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Delete using the remove button makes it stop right away in both the current retail version and the Beta.

Huh! I wonder why that does not work for me. Maybe it is because I am using macOS 10.15.7?

[Ken Hjulstrom]

I just made an interesting discovery.  When I posted this question yesterday, I was in the middle of making final edits to a complex document, so i needed a quick solution or workaround, so when my "reasonable" methods to solve this problem didn't work, I used the "zero-length space" workaround to get my job done.  I completed and shipped out that document earlier today, so for fun right now, I opened Publisher, created a new document, added just a text frame, and typed some text.  When I typed "(A)", it didn't autocorrect to "@", so it appears that my removal of that autocorrect item worked after all.  So I then reopened the document I was working on yesterday, temporarily inserted a small text frame into the margin, and typed text.  When I typed "(A)", it *did" still autocorrect to "@", which now leads me to believe that some aspects of autocorrect must be associated with the document file, rather than just being a global setting.  Does this make sense?

Ken

[Old Bruce]

9 minutes ago, Ken Hjulstrom said:

some aspects of autocorrect must be associated with the document file, rather than just being a global setting.  Does this make sense?

Check the language of the text that is misbehaving. could be different from the one you have chosen in the preferences.

[R C-R]

12 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Check the language of the text that is misbehaving. could be different from the one you have chosen in the preferences.

I have everything set to "English" in the auto-correct preference & in the Character panel > Language > Spelling item in every text block (artistic or frame) in the document. Is there some other place I should be looking for something set to a different language?

Still trying to figure out why in the beta deleting the (a) shortcut does not work for me at all....

[Alfred]

52 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

I am not sure if there is a French Canadien Keyboard for sale, what I have is the Anglo Canadien version which is the same as the U.S. Keyboard.

I’ve just found this French Canadian Magic Keyboard layout:

As you can see, there are extra keys for À, Ç, È and É on the right-hand side, but the @ is paired with the 2 as usual (and it’s a QWERTY keyboard rather than an AZERTY one).