Put Office's AutoCorrect feature to work for you

If I had a nickel for every time I've typed the word "Microsoft," and another two cents for each occasion I've had to enter "Windows," I just might own the dang company by now.

I'll bet you've got your own list of terms you've typed so often you can barely see the letters on their keys anymore. But there's no need for you to spell them out each time you need to use them. Just enter them once in the AutoCorrect dialog box in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Office apps along with the abbreviations of your choice. Then simply type the abbreviation to have the entire word (or words) displayed when you press the space bar.

Start by making a list of the longish terms you type repeatedly. (I'll use the 50 states as an example.) Then in Office 2003 apps, click Tools > AutoCorrect > AutoCorrect Options (or press Alt, T, A in succession). In Office 2007 programs, click the Office button, choose the options button on the bottom-right of the window, select Proofing, and choose the AutoCorrect Options button (or press Alt, F, I, press the down arrow to select Proofing, press Tab to select AutoCorrect Options, and press Enter).

In the Replace field near the middle of the window, enter the full term you want to create a shortcut for. In the With field, type the first two or three letters of the word or term (make sure it isn't itself a word you're likely to type, such as "to" or "of"). For example, I entered each state name in the Replace field, and its two-letter abbreviation in the With field, but I changed "me" to "mai" for "Maine" and "or" to "orn" for "Oregon."

Add the long words and phrases you type most often, along with a two- or three-letter abbreviation, in Office's AutoCorrect Options dialog box.

(Credit: Microsoft)

After your custom list of terms and shortcuts have been added to those built into Office, simply type the shortcut and press the spacebar to enter the full term.

Tomorrow: Transfer your custom AutoCorrect list to another PC.

Actually, in Office 2003 you could use the AutoText feature, which when you put an item in the list, just type the first four characters and hit enter. You could have an entire paragraph or just one word, and NO SHORTCUTS to remember. This feature was disabled in Office 2007 (much to my dismay) and replaced with building blocks.

[voigteav]

I was hoping to see the solution on how to add an Up-Arrow and Down-Arrow as there is for --> and <-- and <==.

Was thinking of using |^ and get Wingding 0xE1 typically... But the Formatted Text Button is greyed out when I try to do it and I end up getting á ???

Any suggetions??

[voigteav]

Found it!!
MS Word Autocorrect Tip:
Everyone uses the autocorrect feature in word (whether you know it or not), but its most powerful application is using it to display repeatedly used graphics and text with just a couple of keystrokes.

For example, if you have a signature containing a logo, which is used in a variety of documents,




Select the text and the image.

Select Tools|Autocorrect Options.
The Autocorrect dialogue box is displayed with the selected text appearing in the With: text box.

In the Replace: text area, type in an abbreviation, or a couple of characters that will represent the signature.

Click on Add and OK.

From any open document, type in the shortcut characters and press enter.


The text, including logo will appear.

And it DOES!

Thanks to http://blogs.usask.ca/ITSTrainingBlog/archive/training_schedule/did_you_know/

lots of nice tips!!!