Clean up copied text for your case notes

What each button does

Each button changes all the text in the box, or only the part you select. Hover over a button, or move to it with the Tab key, to see its name. The examples below come from the same code that runs the buttons.

Case

follow up with pcp

FOLLOW UP WITH PCP

CLIENT HAS CHF AND HTN

client has CHF and HTN

CLIENT HAS CHF AND HTN. FOLLOW UP IN 2 WEEKS.

Client has CHF and HTN. Follow up in 2 weeks.

DISCHARGE PLAN AND FOLLOW-UP CARE

Discharge Plan and Follow-Up Care

Lines

CHF
HTN
CAD

CHF, HTN, CAD

CHF
HTN
CAD

CHF, HTN, and CAD

Client was seen at
home and reports no
new falls.

Client was seen at home and reports no new falls.

CHF, HTN, and CAD

CHF
HTN
CAD

Clean up

Client  said “I’m   doing fine.”

Client said "I'm doing fine."

• CHF
1. HTN
- CAD

CHF
HTN
CAD

- Follow-up on 10-21-2026

Follow up on 10-21-2026

Change only part of your text

Select the lines you want to change, then press a button. Everything outside the selection stays as it was. The line just above the text box tells you what the buttons will change: all text, or your selection and how many characters are in it.

Pressed the wrong button? Press Undo, or Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on a Mac). Undo steps back through your last 100 button presses, including Clear.

In a long note, the buttons stay at the top of the screen as you scroll down, so you can select a paragraph near the end and change it without scrolling back up.

Find and replace

Press Find & replace above the text box, or Ctrl+H. Every match is highlighted as you type, and the counter shows which one you are on, like 3 of 12. Press Enter to jump to the next match and Shift+Enter to go back.

Replace changes the highlighted match and moves to the next one. Replace all changes every match at once, and Undo puts them all back. Leave “Replace with” empty to delete the matches instead. Tick Match case to tell PT from pt, and Whole word to skip matches inside longer words. If you find yourself making the same replacement every day, save it as a button under My tools.

Why CHF stays CHF

Most case converters lowercase every letter, then capitalize the first word of each sentence. CHF turns into Chf, HTN into htn, and you fix each one by hand.

WriteKeys keeps a list of 332 abbreviations and names from health care and social services that hold on to their capitals: CHF, HTN, COPD, ADLs, SNF, PCP, DNR, SSDI, SNAP, and the rest. Terms with a standard mixed spelling come out that way, such as Hx, Dx, EtOH, SpO2, HbA1c, and eGFR. Medicare, Medicaid, months, and weekdays keep their capital letter. See every term on the list.

NEEDS HELP WITH ADLS. HX OF CHF AND ETOH USE. SEES PCP ON MONDAY.

Needs help with ADLs. Hx of CHF and EtOH use. Sees PCP on Monday.

Two more rules help with text that mixes capitals and small letters. A short word in capitals on its own, like an agency's initials, is left alone. A run of words in capitals, like FOLLOW UP IN TWO WEEKS, reads as shouting and gets converted.

What it can't do: in text that is all capitals, a name looks like any other word, so MARIA LOPEZ becomes Maria lopez in sentence case. Select the name and press Title Case, or fix it by hand. Abbreviations that are also everyday words, like PT, OR, and MS, aren't on the list, so they are treated as ordinary words. To switch the list off, untick Keep acronyms.

Make your own buttons

If you clean up the same thing every day, turn it into a button. Under My tools, press + New tool, give it a name, and add steps. Each step removes some text or replaces it with something else, and the steps run from top to bottom. One tool can remove every em dash and every $ sign, then replace & with “and”, all in one press.

**Paid $100** for CHF & HTN care.

Paid 100 for CHF and HTN care.

A step can also put words in. Insert before and Insert after add your text right next to the text the step finds, so a step can turn every CHF into “Dx: CHF”. If the words are already there, they aren't added again.

Em dashes and bullets are hard to type, so the tool editor has buttons that put them in for you. Text is found anywhere, even inside a longer word, so removing $ also cleans up $100. Tick Whole word on a step when you only want it to match on its own, so a step for “pt” leaves “aptitude” alone. Removing text also removes the extra space it leaves behind.

Your tools are saved in your browser, so they are still there after you close it. You can edit or delete a tool at any time, and Undo works on a tool's changes like any other button.

Fix the words a PDF misreads, every time

Scanned PDFs tend to misread the same letters over and over. ESRD comes out as ESRO, COPD as COPO. Under My words, press Replace list and add the wrong word and the right one. From then on WriteKeys fixes them as you paste, or whenever you press Fix my words. If a fix is ever wrong, Undo brings back exactly what you pasted.

The list is saved in your browser, so it is still there after you close the browser and come back. It never leaves your computer, and you can edit or delete any word. Only whole words are replaced, so ESRO won't touch a longer word that happens to contain it. A word you type in lowercase matches any capitals; a word typed with capitals matches exactly, so a fix for PT won't change “pt”.

Keep the list to misread words and abbreviations. Don't add patient names or anything else that identifies a person, because anyone using the same browser can open the list.

Autocomplete the words you type most

Under My words, press Autocomplete and add the words and phrases you type every day: program names, facilities, diagnoses, stock phrases like “client reports”. A comma stays part of the phrase, so “lives alone, uses a walker” is one entry. To add several at once, paste a list with one on each line.

After you type two letters, a small box under the word shows matching entries. Press Tab to use the highlighted one, the arrow keys to pick another, or Esc to hide the box. On a phone, tap the suggestion. A phrase saved in lowercase gets a capital first letter when you start it with one, so it works at the start of a sentence too. Ctrl+Z takes a completion back out.

Like your other lists, it is saved only in your browser and is still there after you close it. Leave patient names out of it.

Check your spelling

Words that may be misspelled get a red wavy line. Click one to see suggestions and pick the right spelling, or press Check next under the text box to go through them one by one with the keyboard. The word list knows everyday English plus common diagnoses, medicines and their brand names, and note shorthand like pt and appt. Acronyms in capitals, like CHF and ESRD, are never marked.

For a word that is right as it is, you have three choices:

• Ignore leaves it alone until you close the tab. It isn't saved anywhere, so use it for names.
• Always ignore saves it in your browser, so it is never marked again, like the name of a program or a facility.
• Add to autocomplete saves it too, and also suggests it as you type.

To check which words you have ignored, press Ignored words under My words. It lists the saved words and the ones ignored only for this tab. You can add words there, save a this-tab word for good, or delete a word so the spell check marks it again. The spell check button above the text box (an A with a check mark) turns it off and on.

The spell check runs in your browser tab, like everything else here. Your browser's own spell check stays off in the text box, because some browsers send the text to an online service to check it.

Save your own templates

If you start many notes the same way, such as a home visit outline or a discharge follow-up checklist, save it as a template. Type or paste the outline in the text box, press Templates, then + New template. It starts with the text from your box (or just the part you selected), so give it a name and save.

Next time, press Templates and Insert, or press the template's own button under the text box: the first three templates on your list get one. The template fills the box when it is empty, or goes where your cursor is, and Undo takes it back out. Templates are saved in your browser, so they are still there after you close it. Keep patient details out of them and fill those in after you insert one.

Highlight what you still need to fill in

Select words in the text box and press the Highlight button (the highlighter pen above the text). They get a yellow background, like a highlighter, until you type over them. Press it again on highlighted words to take the highlight off.

In a template, put [square brackets] around the parts to fill in, for example “Visit date: [date]”, or select them in the template editor and press Highlight. When you insert the template, the brackets go away and those words show up highlighted. *** and ___ are always highlighted. The bar under the text shows how many highlighted parts are left; press F2 to jump to the next one (Shift+F2 goes back), and it is selected so typing replaces it. Copy all reminds you if any are left. If you use Epic, *** and F2 work the way they do in SmartText.

Highlights are a reminder while you work. They are not part of the text, so they do not paste into your record.

Your text stays on your computer

WriteKeys is one web page. When you press a button, the change happens in your browser, on your device. There is no server receiving your text, no account, no analytics, and no ads. The page also tells your browser to block it from connecting to anything once it has loaded, so it could not send your text anywhere even by mistake. Close the tab and the text is gone.

Read how it works, and how to check it yourself.

Step-by-step help for common jobs

• Turn a list into one line with commas: problem lists, medication lists, or a column copied from Excel.
• Remove line breaks from PDF text: referral packets and discharge summaries that paste in as short broken lines.
• Fix ALL CAPS and keep the acronyms: intake forms and older records typed in capitals.
• Remove dashes and bullets: lists with a dash or bullet on every line.