Request: Fields in AutoCorrect

[Evaluation complete.]

Personally, I need to be able to insert fields in AutoCorrect so I can set up automation that ensures the insertion of Non-Breaking Hyphen/Space and other visible and invisible special characters, ensuring that frequently used terms break lines correctly as desired.

This likely wouldn’t affect imported or pasted content, only directly typed text, which I also hope a solution could be made for.

It's simply a business need I have, as these hundreds of terms should be typographically ensured with automation—saving time, nerves, and money.

It is possible to ensure a little bit in InDesign and Quark in different ways, but this would help us a great deal, as the need is quite predictable.

[walt.farrell]

I'm a bit puzzled by it affecting "only directly typed text", when you've targeted your request against Fields (which are only typed once, in the Fields panel, unless they are populated as part of Data Merge).

Can you explain the usage a bit more, please?

[MikeTO]

Are you asking for a menu in the AutoCorrect replacement field to insert special characters, similar to the one that is in the Find & Replacement fields? I agree that would be a good improvement.

If this is what you want, you can already do it with copy/paste. For example, if you're frequently typing a name that doesn't hyphenate the way you want it to, just type the text into Publisher with a soft hyphen at the spot you want and then copy and paste the word with the soft hyphen into the AutoCorrect replacement field. There won't be a special character token to indicate that it is there but it will work correctly.

I will add this tip to the next edition of my manual.

Cheers

[Evaluation complete.]

16 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Are you asking for a menu in the AutoCorrect replacement field to insert special characters, similar to the one that is in the Find & Replacement fields? I agree that would be a good improvement.

If this is what you want, you can already do it with copy/paste. For example, if you're frequently typing a name that doesn't hyphenate the way you want it to, just type the text into Publisher with a soft hyphen at the spot you want and then copy and paste the word with the soft hyphen into the AutoCorrect replacement field. There won't be a special character token to indicate that it is there but it will work correctly.

I will add this tip to the next edition of my manual.

Cheers

Yes, that's something along the lines of what I'd like, and also ideally the option to update all or selected text so that all autocorrections are applied to it. If autocorrect only runs on text I type myself, then imported or pasted text from external sources should be adjusted as well – otherwise an option to apply it during import or paste. Doing find and replace one by one would be madness, and you can’t expect people to type directly into the DTP program, so if autocorrect only works while typing in Publisher, it doesn’t hold much value for me.

Ah, thanks so much for the tip with copy-paste; I’ll try that right away!

[Evaluation complete.]

19 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm a bit puzzled by it affecting "only directly typed text", when you've targeted your request against Fields (which are only typed once, in the Fields panel, unless they are populated as part of Data Merge).

Can you explain the usage a bit more, please?

Sure! I meant, if autocorrect only works on text I type character by character in Publisher, then it won’t correct all the text I get from external sources, perhaps in text format or Word, or that I paste in without formatting. So, I’m looking for a method to automate ensuring that technical terms and other elements aren’t split unintentionally.

[MikeTO]

An option to apply all AutoCorrect rules to existing text would be interesting, as long as it was an option of course.

This need is why people ask for GREP Styles like InDesign. You keep receiving content that has the same issues and you need to clean it up. Power users use GREP (regular expressions) with the Find and Replace panel to clean up imported text, not AutoCorrect. But although there's now a menu of previously used searches in the Find and Replace panel, it's still a pain if you do this every day. InDesign's GREP Styles feature automates this so that recurring issues can be cleaned up automatically. The majority of users will never understand GREP and what you're asking for would be less powerful but easier to use.

I hope the scripting feature has a record mode. If it does, you'd be able to record using Find and Replace All for each of the issues you need to fix. Then in the future you could simply choose the recorded script after importing the text.

[Evaluation complete.]

Yes, but I've now reached the point with technology where I would expect an AI-driven input field where I could type, "replace regular hyphen in the following words with Non-Breaking Hyphen:" followed by a list of words, and then have it become an action that can be executed individually or in batches across the document. This could be powered by GREP under the hood (that can be used more directly by advanced users), but I don’t think Canva is aiming to hit their target customers with UNIX syntax. 😊