Here’s a tip for saving time typing the repetitive content in your weekly order of service cards.
This can work for you whether you type out your worship set in Word, or an email – whatever you use to type the list of songs for the week.
It’s a free software called Phrase Express. (for Windows; there are similar text expansion programs for Mac.)
It’s simple. Once you’ve downloaded, installed the program, and opened it, you enter a template. Then you assign a set of keystrokes that will trigger that template.
In the picture below, you’ll see the template for the order of service on the top right and the “autotext” or trigger I use on the bottom right.
In the example above, I have the letters “oos” set to trigger the skeleton of the weekly order of service content.
(I recommend choosing something you wouldn’t normally use for the trigger phrase. If you pick something you would use often, it could get annoying. Every time you type that set of keystrokes, the program will recognize it and bring in the template. In fact, as I typed this post, each time I typed my autotext, the program tried to bring in the template. That will not be a problem if you choose something out of the ordinary, like the first letters of each word of a phrase.)
Then, each week, when I am ready to prepare the plan for the upcoming services, I open a new email, type that code or trigger, then the space bar or enter,
and Phrase Express pulls the template into the email program.
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Not only will this save you time, (phrase express boasts that it has saved me almost 7 hours. Who knows how accurate that is, but, hey, I’ll take it) it also allows you to include details that would be easy to forget week by week.
Would a software like this save you time? Comment here.
Disclaimer: I have not had any trouble with this program. However, I cannot fully guarantee it will work without trouble on your system. It’s free software. “Swim at your own risk.”
Credit to Michael Hyatt’s blog, where I first came across this kind of program.