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April 2008 - Word - A New Spin on AutoCorrect
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Microsoft Word – A new spin on AutoCorrect
Many of you are familiar with the AutoCorrect feature found in Microsoft’s Word (Excel and Outlook) programs – you make a common typo like “ADN” and the system automatically changes it to “AND” for you. What a great feature for people like me who are really good at typos! But did you know that you can add entries to your AutoCorrect and save yourself some serious time?
Let’s say you have a company policy in place that says anytime you reference your company you must use the legal entity name – for this example your company name is AIS Technology, LLC. That’s a lot of letters, not to mention capitalization and punctuation! I can add an entry to my AutoCorrect list so that every time I type in “atl” the system will replace those letters with “AIS Technology, LLC”. It’s pretty cool! You can do the same thing with a disclaimer sentence or common closing sentence for your emails! You type “typ” and the system changes it to “Thank you so much for your prompt attention to this matter.”
To modify your AutoCorrect list in Word 2003 –
From the Menu Bar, choose Tools, then AutoCorrect Options. You will see the box below.
1. To add an entry to the AutoCorrect list, type the abbreviation you want to add in the Replace: column and type your full text (with punctuation and capitalization if appropriate) in the With: column.
2. Then click the Add button.
Repeat these steps for every entry you want to add!
To modify your AutoCorrect list in Word 2007 –
Click on the Office Button in the upper left hand corner of the Word window and choose Word Options. Select Proofing from the list on the left, then click on the AutoCorrect Options button on the right. Then follow steps 1 and 2 above to add entries.
A couple of things to keep in mind –
• Office 2007 shares the same AutoCorrect list across Word, Excel and Outlook – older versions may not – so you MAY need to add AutoCorrect entries in the different programs.
• Make sure your abbreviations are not letter combinations that you use in your daily life. For example, using “so” as the abbreviation for “Sandy Oliver” would be a bad plan, because every time I typed the word so, it would change it to my name!
And that’s how you can save time by autocorrecting your unique abbreviations, so…
Give It A Try!
If you would like a printable version of this tip, click here.
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