Cannot import text replacements from plist

Somehow all my text replacements were removed from iCloud. I had an old backup of the plist, so I tried following the support instructions: Back up and share text replacements on Mac – Apple Support (AU)

Nothing appears to happen.

I thought maybe it was a formatting problem, so I created one replacement, then exported my text replacements, then carefully followed the formatting from that new plist file to add all my replacements.

Still nothing gets imported.


Below is an example of what's in the plist file, with just two replacements. The file is named "Text Substitutions.plist" which is the same as the exported file.


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<array>

<dict>

<key>phrase</key>

<string>AASW</string>

<key>shortcut</key>

<string>aasw</string>

</dict>

<dict>

<key>phrase</key>

<string>Australian Association of Social Workers</string>

<key>shortcut</key>

<string>xaasw</string>

</dict>

</array>

</plist>


iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 13.7

Posted on Sep 13, 2025 7:04 PM

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Cannot import text replacements from plist

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