Mavericks' text expansion mucked up. Solution? Or return to 3rd party utility.

[tuqqer]

Big text expansion user. 300 of em, using hundreds of times a day. Loved Spell Catcher for 12 years, and switched last year to Apple's internal text expansion system (System Preferences: Keyboard: Text).

But it's quite broken on my system (10.9.3); shortcuts don't expand, or only expand in one app but not another, or some days they work and others not. So I'm looking either for a solution, or suggestions from other Big Users for going back to one of the 3rd Party utilities.

Question 1: is there a way start fresh with Apple's internal text expansion system. If so, I'll try that. I don't even mind retyping all of the text expansions by hand. I've taken screenshots of the 270 that I have, and am willing to just redo them, if that will fix it so that when I type the shortcut into the majority of Apple apps (mainly Messages, Pages, Mail, and Safari), they work. I'm savvy enough to know how to reveal hidden files, and I hear that this the broke file could be the .GlobalPreferences.plist. But it could be something else. More, I want to know if all of this will fix it, or if I'm better off going with a 3rd Party.

Question 2: if some of you Big Users have seen the same issues, which 3rd Party utility are you finding the most robust. I already own TypeItForMe, and Spell Catcher is still in limbo (since the owner passed away). I'm open to whatever text expansion lovers suggest.

[testcase]

I've been happy with "Typinator".

[clay]

I don't have 300 shortcuts (far fewer), but I have been liking aText http://www.trankynam.com/atext/ for the past couple of months. Only $5, and so far I haven't had any issues on Mavericks.

[Chakravartin]

tuqqer wrote:
Question 1: is there a way start fresh with Apple's internal text expansion system.

You don't have a "Restore Defaults" button in the "Language & Text" and "Keyboard Shortcuts" pref's?

[tuqqer]

Chakravartin wrote:
You don't have a "Restore Defaults" button in the "Language & Text" and "Keyboard Shortcuts" pref's?

I remember that option, but it's not there in Mavericks any more. You can delete each one, but that isn't fixing the issue I'm having which is that some of the shortcuts work and some don't. Also, if I try reinstating any of the same shortcuts, they absolutely don't work. I'm thinking the file is corrupted.

I've also learned that it's supposed to reside in the ~Library/Dictionaries/CoreDataUbiquitySupport, but I've deleted that entire folder a couple times, restarted, and the shortcuts remain. I'm thinking there's a cache file somewhere.

[Chakravartin]

tuqqer wrote:
[quote=Chakravartin]
You don't have a "Restore Defaults" button in the "Language & Text" and "Keyboard Shortcuts" pref's?

I remember that option, but it's not there in Mavericks any more.
Didn't see that... You can reset keyboard shortcuts, but can't reset text substitutions anymore. Weird what Apple decides to take away sometimes...

Yeah, it should be the ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist file. It's invisible, so you'd either remove (or rename) it from the Terminal or modify your Finder pref's to show invisible files i you want to get rid of it. Then log out and in again to see the change.

[space-time]

tuqqer, did it work fine in previous version of OS X? when you moved from 10.8 to 10.9, did you upgrade or make a clean install?