Office XP Tips: More Ways to Type Less

Little-known commands that automatically enter commonly used text.

Jim Welp, PCWorld.com

Helpful servant that it is, Microsoft Word offers a way for you to quickly enter commonly used words and phrases such as "Best wishes" or "To Whom It May Concern." To give you a leg up, Word offers to complete the phrase via a little pop-up box once you begin typing it. When the pop-up box appears, all you have to do is press Enter and Word will complete the phrase. Word calls these stored phrases "AutoText" and calls the method of entering them "AutoComplete." To take a look at the AutoText phrases and to turn on or off AutoComplete, choose Insert, AutoText, AutoText. If you want Word to offer this help, make sure the option "Show AutoComplete suggestions" is checked. To see the AutoText phrases that are available, browse through the box labeled "Enter AutoText entries here."

Helpful? Sort of. While it's benevolent of Word to offer this assistance, it's really not much trouble to type "Best wishes" all by your lonesome. But AutoText and AutoComplete can be a lot of help if you create your own entries. It's easy to create and store commonly used blocks of text and recall them with just a few keystrokes. For instance, you might need to routinely type a disclaimer, a legal clause, or a set of instructions. Or, you might have a clumsy-to-type item such as a long Web address that you want to make sure is accurate each time you enter it. Instead of typing it over and over, store it in AutoText and recall it with just a few keystrokes. Best of all, Word stores the formatting along with the text.

You AutoComplete Me

To create an AutoText entry, type and format your text, select it (including the paragraph mark at the end), and choose Insert, AutoText, New. When Word presents the Create AutoText dialog box, type a logical name for your entry in the "Please name your AutoText entry" field. Make sure your name is at least four characters long so that AutoComplete can recognize it later. Click OK to complete the entry. That's all there is to it.

To use your new AutoText entry, begin typing the name you assigned it. Once you've typed a handful of letters, the AutoComplete box pops up. Press Enter and your stored text appears in your document (the name you started typing will disappear). If the AutoComplete pop-up appears when you don't want it, just keep typing and it will go away.

I created an AutoText entry called "office" that stores my name, e-mail address, and the URL for the Web archive of Office XP newsletters. Because I don't want to include this info in every letter I write, I didn't include it in my letterhead. But when I do want to include it, I just type office and press Enter. Immediately, the following text appears:

Jim Welp

officeguy@att.net

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/locations/0,loc,82,00.asp

Not only does it save me some keystrokes, but it also ensures I won't mistype the e-mail or Web addresses.

All Roads Lead to Text

If you find pop-up boxes annoying, you can turn them off and still take advantage of AutoText. Because Word remembers your AutoText entry's name whether or not AutoComplete is turned on, you can type the name and press F3 to insert the text. One advantage of this method is that you can make your AutoText name as brief as you want it. Instead of calling mine "office," I could have simply assigned to it the letter o. Then I could invoke it by pressing o followed by F3. To turn off the AutoComplete pop-up boxes, choose Insert, AutoText, AutoText and uncheck the box called "Show AutoComplete suggestions." The only drawback to this is that you won't have the visual pop-up reminders, which might make it tough to keep track of the AutoText entries you've created.

Nowadays, software developers aren't happy unless they can offer you several different methods of accomplishing the same task. Such is the case with AutoText, so I would be remiss if I didn't point out other ways to insert AutoText entries:

• Choose Insert, AutoText and choose an entry from the categories in the drop-down menu. (Entries that you create appear on the submenu called "Normal.")
• Choose Insert, AutoText, AutoText, select an entry from the dialog box, click Insert, and click OK.
• If you want to go AutoText hog-wild and keep a toolbar on-screen at all times, you can right-click any toolbar and choose AutoText from the menu that appears; once your new AutoText toolbar appears, you can click All Entries to select from a drop-down list.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

You can't exactly edit an AutoText entry. (Maybe instead of giving you fifty different ways to invoke one, the developers should work on a way to edit one, eh?) Instead, you create a new entry and give it the same name as your old one. To change an entry, edit the text in your document accordingly, select it, and choose Insert, AutoText, New. In the Create AutoText dialog box, type the name of your old entry and click OK. Word will ask, "Do you want to redefine the AutoText entry?" click Yes.

To delete an AutoText entry, choose Insert, AutoText, AutoText, choose the entry you want to vamoose, click Delete, and click OK.