Using AutoCorrect Effectively to Save Yourself Keystrokes

Here are three suggestions for making the most of AutoCorrect:

• Define longer AutoCorrect entries AutoCorrect is wonderful for fixing typos as you type. But if you work extensively with text, consider using AutoCorrect to accelerate your typing by defining AutoCorrect entries for long words, phrases, sentences, or even paragraphs you use frequently. As mentioned earlier, the limit for an AutoCorrect entry is 255 characters , but you can use several entries in sequence. (You can also use AutoText entries instead. See the next chapter.)

• Use AutoCorrect for enforcing consistency Because AutoCorrect can change up to the last 31 characters, you can create AutoCorrect entries to correct whole phrases that you (or other people) get wrong. For example, if your company changes the name of its Quality Control Department to Quality Assurance Department, you might create an AutoCorrect entry to change Quality Control Department to Quality Assurance Department to help ensure the change was made throughout all documents you subsequently created. (You should probably also create a shorter AutoCorrect entry for the departments name .)

• Create multiple AutoCorrect entries to fix the same problem If you create many AutoCorrect entries, remembering entries you use less frequently may be a problem. But theres nothing to stop you from creating multiple entries for the same replacement text. You can also create multiple AutoCorrect entries to fix assorted misspellings of common words. For example, you might create AutoCorrect entries to change typos such as thoug , thogh , thouh , and other variations to though.

Adding and Deleting AutoCorrect Exceptions

Once you get the hang of AutoCorrect, youll find it an invaluable weapon in your battle against wasted keystrokes. But sometimes youll find that AutoCorrect corrects a term you dont want it to correct. When this happens, you can prevent AutoCorrect from repeating the mistake by defining an AutoCorrect exception. To do so, click the Exceptions button on the AutoCorrect tab of the AutoCorrect Options dialog box and use the controls in the AutoCorrect Exceptions dialog box:

All the Office applications provide first-letter exceptions (for abbreviations such as corp. and for similar terms that end with punctuation) and initial-caps exceptions (for example, IDs). Word also provides other exceptions, which let you define exceptions that fall outside those categories.