Complete BlackBerry Secrets Blog

As nice as it is to have a QWERTY keyboard on your BlackBerry, typing on it is nowhere near as fast as it can be on your standard desktop or even laptop. Fortunately, the designers of the BlackBerry device were thoughtful enough to augment the keyboard with a number of shortcuts that can be used to speed things up (or at least make it easier on your sore fingers!).

In addition, your BlackBerry has a fantastic feature called AutoText, whose main function is tocorrect common spelling mistakes. The great news is that you can also use it to define automaticreplacement of shortcut letter combinations with any text you wish.

For example, suppose that you want to add a favorite sentence or phrase at the end of every e-mail you compose (such as “Best regards, Glenn”). All you need to do is define an AutoText entry that contains your sentence and select a short letter combination that you can use to invoke the sentence or phrase (such as “brg”).

To add an entry to AutoText:
1. Click the trackwheel while typing and choose Edit AutoText. You are presented with a list of predefined AutoText mappings.
2. Press the trackwheel again and choose New from the menu to create your entry.

Typing Shortcuts
To insert . . . Do this . . .
A period Rather than pressing ALT+M, press the SPACE key two times in succession. Not only will your BlackBerry insert a period but it will also capitalize the next letter you type.
A capital letter Normally you would press the CAP key along with the letter you want to capitalize. With BlackBerry, you can simply press and hold the letter you want to capitalize.
A special character Press and hold any key while scrolling the trackwheel up or down. You will see a rotating list of characters mapped to that key appear on the screen. Select the character you want by scrolling the trackwheel.
An @ symbol In any field designed to accept an e-mail address (such as the e-mail field in an Address Book entry), simply type a space for BlackBerry to automatically insert an @ character. This trick works for the period used in e-mail addresses as well.