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I'd like to give a colleague all of my text expansions without her having to re-enter them on her Mac. I was hoping to locate the file, then simply send her a copy to replace her own. (She doesn't use the feature.) I've searched the Library folder, but can't locate the file that contains the text expansion data.

Does anyone know where the file produced by System Preferences > Keyboard > Text is kept?

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Before Mavericks, they're stored in NSUserReplacementItems in the global preferences. However, since Mavericks, the replacements are stored in…

~/Library/Dictionaries/CoreDataUbiquitySupport/$USER~*/UserDictionary/*/store/UserDictionary.db
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  • When I look at the contents of that file in TextWrangler, I don't the any text that indicates the expansions are in there. Another UserDictionary.db file is along a similar path at ~/Library/Dictionaries/CoreDataUbiquitySupport/$USER~*/UserDictionary/*/store/UserDictionary.db. That file has the expansion text. Could this be the one to copy to my colleague?
    – blloyd
    Commented May 9, 2014 at 21:36
  • @user77822 Yes — I've updated my answer
    – grg ♦
    Commented May 9, 2014 at 21:51
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I've tried this a few times: I've deleted all of the files in that UserDictionary folder and restarted my Mac (10.9.3), but the expansion text list (Sys Pref:Keyboard:Text) remains. I'm thinking that there may be some cache file somewhere.

I'm trying to delete the file itself, because the whole text expansion system on my Mac has gone wonky. If I delete any shortcut, and then add it in again with a different expansion, it just doesn't work. So only about half of the 80+ expansions currently expand, while the other half work fine.

(I'm referring to the files found in ~/Library/Dictionaries/CoreDataUbiquitySupport/$USER~/UserDictionary//store/UserDictionary.db )

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