If you learn how to use the AutoCorrect features, you’ll find yourself working faster and more effectively with Microsoft Office.
MAKING AUTOCORRECT DO THE WORK FOR YOU
By Kara Monroe
Many people find the feature of Word that pops up pseudo tool tips when you are typing common words, such as the month or day of the week, annoying. However, if you learn to use these and many other AutoCorrect features, you’ll find yourself working faster and more effectively with Microsoft Office. AutoCorrect is one of those Microsoft Office setup options that gives you big bang for your buck as time spent fine-tuning AutoCorrect in one Office application carries over to all other Office applications.
A BRIEF TOUR OF AUTOCORRECT OPTIONS
If you’ve never spent time looking at the AutoCorrect Options dialog box, it’s a good idea to take a brief look around first. To access the dialog, go to the Tools menu in any office application, but preferably Microsoft Word. While AutoCorrect Options is available in most Microsoft desktop applications, the dialog box does change some from application to application.
For instance, the dialog box in Microsoft Word has five tabs while the dialog box in Microsoft Excel has only three. But if you use many Microsoft programs to complete your day to day tasks, then you’ll still get incredible return on your time investment in fine-tuning AutoCorrect as this dialog is available in many Microsoft programs including Publisher, Front Page, and Visio just to name a few.
Back to our tour… Open Microsoft Word and go to Tools > AutoCorrect Options. The AutoCorrect Options dialog box is made up of five tabs – AutoCorrect, AutoFormat as you Type, AutoText, AutoFormat, and Smart Tags. We’ll take a look at each tab and the options included in the tab. Let’s begin with the AutoCorrect tab.
AUTOCORRECT TAB
The AutoCorrect tab is essentially made of up three different parts – the check boxes, the replace-with section, and the Exceptions button. The check boxes are the easiest to understand and work with. They will require you to think a bit about how you work and how you want things in Office to work for you. For instance, many people find the option to capitalize the first letter of sentences a time saver as they do not have to hit the shift key after a period in most cases, nor do they have to hit the shift key after they hit Enter. (Your first grade grammar teacher would not be proud of the fact that you are letting a computer capitalize the first letter of each sentence for you). I, on the other hand, find this helpful feature annoying so I leave this option unchecked. You will have to decide which of these options works best for you. You can turn on as many or as few of these options as you like and you can always come back and change the settings later.
REPLACE WITH
The Replace-With section of the AutoCorrect tab allows you to enter commonly misspelled words and the manner in which you misspell them. For example, I commonly misspell school as shcool and invitation as invitiation. There are two ways you can add these to AutoCorrect. The first is to manually add the item to AutoCorrect options. To do this, open Tools > AutoCorrect Options. In the Replace box, type the wrong spelling (in my case shcool). In the With box, type the correct spelling (school). Click OK. now, type shcool followed by a space. Word will automatically enter in the correct spelling of the word as you entered it in the dialog box.
The second method for adding entries to the Replace With requires that you have the “Automatically use suggestions from the spell checker” option checked. If you have this checked, then adding items to the Replace-With box can be done during the spell check. Recall we were correcting invitiation. When I type that word in Microsoft Word, there are red wavy lines under the word telling me it is misspelled. If you do not have red waving lines, click Tools > Options > Spelling & Grammar and check the Check spelling as you type box. Now that you can see the red squiggles you can get suggested entries for correcting the word by right-clicking on the word. To add this as a word to be auto-corrected in the future, click the AutoCorrect > and select invitation from the drop down list. Now if you type invitiation, AutoCorrect will fix the spelling without further help from you. Note that you can do the same thing while using the Spelling and Grammar check. If a word has been m isspelled, simply click the word you would like to replace it with from now on from the listing of words on the Spell Check dialog box and then click the AutoCorrect button.
INTENTIONALLY MISSPELLING
But, what if there is a word you intentionally misspell all the time. The classic example for me is the acronym cna which stands for Certified Nursing Assistant or Certified Novell Associate depending on the context. Microsoft wrongly believes that cna should be can. To delete an entry from the Replace-With section, simply select it and click the delete button below this section. Now I can type cna to my heart’s content.
The AutoCorrect dialog box Exception area is supposed to allow you to compensate for Microsoft’s attempts to help you when you don’t really need the help. Unfortunately, my experience says these features don’t work as well as they should and could perhaps use a little more time with the programming staff. If you open the Exceptions dialog box you’ll see that each of its three tabs is simply a box to add exceptions along with a checkbox. My first problem with this box comes from the checkbox. If you have the Automatically Add Words to the List checkbox selected AutoCorrect is supposed to learn how you type and, if you consistently change something that it is AutoCorrect it should add it to the appropriate exception box. However, you are forced to do this in the most inefficient manner possible by actually backspacing. For example, if I typed cna and it got replaced with can and I caught it immediately after the word had changed, I could hit Ctrl-Z to undo the AutoCorrect . Using this more efficient undo method does not add items to the Exceptions list. You must use the space key and backspace out the incorrect text and enter the new corrected text – certainly not the most efficient. I’ve also been running this install of Microsoft Office 2002 for more than two years now and have had the check box checked the entire time with no entries in the exceptions box. Other folks have reported the opposite being true of the Initial Caps exception list – that too many words get captured in that list because of use of Undo on a regular basis. You may need to check this list on occasion and remove any words that you want to appear correctly. If this continues to annoy you, consider unchecking the “Add Words to the List” checkbox. The thought behind the Exceptions box is good -it still needs a bit more work.
A FAVORITE TRICK
Our editor in chief has a favorite trick for AutoCorrect and it’s worth repeating here. I talked about converting cna into ” Certified Nursing Assistant ” with AutoCorrect and that’s the common thing you’ll see in demos. But like many things you see in software demos, it doesn’t work in the real world.
With commonly used acronyms you might want to use both the long and short versions – so I don’t always want ‘cna’ converted into the long form.
Peter’s trick is to have assign a character to the short version to tell AutoCorrect to convert to the long version.
For example typing FBI stays as FBI but typing FBI~ can be made to convert to Federal Bureau of Investigation.
You can choose any trailing character you like – the tilde ~ , @ , # or whatever.
AUTOFORMAT AS YOU TYPE
Let’s move on to the AutoFormat as you Type box. This tab simply contains a series of checkboxes that you select or deselect depending on your typing habits. I wish the world would do as I do and deselect the Replace as you type – Internet and network paths with hyperlinks. I hate the default blue underline that Microsoft applies to all Internet addresses and network paths.
If you are a true keyboard shortcut aficionado you can enter bold text by encasing it in asterisks and italic text by encasing it in underscores (try it by checking the *bold* and _italic_ with real formatting, clicking OK, and then typing the *Hello* followed by a space. Hello should turn bold). Note you can turn off automatic bulleted lists and automatic numbered lists on this tab as well.
Spend some time tweaking the options on these two tabs. In part 2, we’ll focus on the other options – AutoText, AutoFormat, and Smart Tags.
See Also
- Autocorrect tips by degrees
- Quickly adding special characters
- Spell-checker pulps cookbook
- Word’s problem with a possessive Donna
- Beyond simple Undo in Microsoft Office
- Using AutoCorrect in Office – Part 2
