The Joy of AutoCorrect

There is a simple feature in Microsoft Office that will radically improve your productivity. Chances are, you are likely unaware of, or worse, downright annoyed by this feature, and yet I can almost guarantee that it will change your world once you learn it. This feature is called AutoCorrect.

It fixes common typos!

Try this:

On a new page in Microsoft Word, type the letters...

tyhe

…and when you press the spacebar—Presto Change-O!— your text will instantly be converted to...

The

Why did this happen? AutoCorrect! Specifically, AutoCorrect is making sure that the first letter of the sentence is capitalized. Moreover, AutoCorrect also knows that “tyhe" is a common typo people make when typing the word “the.” So it automatically corrects these mistakes…. hence the name, AutoCorrect.

Note that AutoCorrect doesn’t take any action until it knows that the user has completed typing the word and have pressed the spacebar. That’s why it’s a magic key. There are other characters that likewise indicate a word is completed including the period, comma, exclamation point, parenthesis, and so forth.

Here are a few other examples you can try…

abbout … accident … aboutthe… monday (while “Monday” is spelled correctly, days of the week should always be capitalized)

AutoCorrect is designed to automatically fix common typos by instantly changing misspelled text to the correct spelling. For example, if you type the word “recieve,” it will automatically replace it with “receive” as soon as you indicate that you are done typing the misspelled word, which could be pressing the spacebar, a period, a comma, etc.

Customizing AutoCorrect
You can also add entries to the AutoCorrect dictionary if there is a word that you commonly misspell. For example, let’s say that I often mistakenly type “dcuk" when I mean to type “duck.” AutoCorrect isn’t already programmed to fix this typo, but I can customize it to do so easily.

Open the Tools menu and select AutoCorrect.
(Note: in Office XP, this option is called AutoCorrect Options)

Notice the options that are checked by default… “capitalize names of days,” “capitalize first letter of sentence,” etc. If there is an option you want to toggle on or off, you click on the checkbox to check or uncheck it.

In the Replace field, type dcuk. In the With field, type duck, and click OK. Next, type dcuk in your Word document, and when you press the spacebar, it is automatically corrected to duck. Hurrah! So far so good?

But I Don’t Want to AutoCorrect That Word!
What if AutoCorrect is correcting words that you don’t want corrected? How can you stop it? There are a few ways.

Let’s say, for example, you work for a company called “American Computer Network,” and you have problems whenever you type out their initials, ACN.

Type the letters ACN.

Notice that AutoCorrect automatically changes the word to “CAN” after you press the spacebar. One way to prevent this from happening is to remove the AutoCorrect entry.

Open the Tools menu and select AutoCorrect.

Scroll down in the list and find the entry for “acn” and “can,” select it, and click Remove. Click OK and try typing ACN again in the document.

Now you can type the word without AutoCorrect “fixing” your spelling.

Alternately, you could go to Tools>AutoCorrect and click Exceptions. You could specify that when you type an uppercase ACN, this should be an exception to the AutoCorrect rule of switching. Either way, it’s not hard to prevent AutoCorrect from changing a word.

AutoCorrect Shorthand for Long Words
Not only can AutoCorrect fix custom typos, you can also program it to type out long words that you may commonly type out, such as your name or email address.

For example, let’s say that we want to make it easy to type your name out. (Note: this works as long as your initials do not spell out an actual English word. For example, if my name were John Allen Mortenson, my initials would spell jam, which is an actual English word. In this case, I would use “jamm” or some other variation that doesn’t spell an actual word.)

Go to Tools> AutoCorrect.

In the Replace field, type your initials lowercase (for example, jgm).

Next, in the With field, type your full name used mixed case (for example, John Mortenson).

Click OK.

If you want to type your name, you can simply type your initials (lower case) and press the space bar —WHAM!— You’ve got your full name!

You can create any number of shorthand words to quickly insert common long words. Do you have to write a paper on “antidisestablishmentarianism?” Well instead of typing it a million times, you can set up an AutoCorrect entry that will automatically plunk it in (say, “adeti”). AutoCorrect can also insert phrases. You could set up a shortcut to type out your company’s name… for example; expand “sfeab” to “Society for the Enrichment of American Bankers.” You could also set up an AutoCorrect entry for your email address, or even long words that you use from time to time (like the word “simultaneously”). Here are a few rules for setting up AutoCorrect shorthand entries…

Always go from lower case to mixed case. If you define using uppercase in the “Replace” field, you’ll always have to type uppercase to initiate the correction, and it’s easier to type lowercase words.
You can’t use actual English words as shorthand words.
Don’t use your initials (or acronyms) if you may really have to type them out in your documents without auto correction.
You can’t include hard returns in an AutoCorrect entry, so you couldn’t program AutoCorrect to fill in a 3-line address, for example.

This will save you a ton of time at work. Never again do you have to type out that long name or email address (at least, not in Microsoft office products). Are you starting to see how this will increase your productivity? I hope so.

Inserting special characters
AutoCorrect is also programmed to generate certain special characters. For example, in order to insert the © symbol, you have to open the Insert menu and select Symbol and hunt through the list.

Type the letter c in parenthesis. (c)

Voila! -Instant copyright symbol!

For more fun, try these: (tm), (r), or :).

Once again, we see AutoCorrect in action. This time, AutoCorrect is replacing the text with a symbol. How much would you pay for AutoCorrect now? But wait, there’s more…!

Let’s try one of our own. We have a friend named José whose name has an e with an accent mark. You can get the é by using insert>symbol or you could use the universal Windows OS shortcut by holding down the ALT key and typing 0233 on the numeric keypad. (For more about this shortcut, see the tutorial on the Character Map). But it’s a pain to do that all of the time. Well, we can define an entry in AutoCorrect that will put in the accent. Since “Jose” is considered a normal word in the Office dictionary, we’ll have to use a variation of his name, jos.

Go to Tools> AutoCorrect.

In the Replace field, type jos

Next, in the With field, type Jos and then hold down the ALT key and type 0233 on the numeric keypad to insert the é and click OK.

If you want to type José’s name, you can type jos and press the space bar and voila!

But Wait, There’s More!
Isn’t AutoCorrect fabulous? Don’t you wish that the same functionality worked in Excel or PowerPoint?

Fortunately, most of the Microsoft Office applications share the same AutoCorrect dictionary, so once you’ve added an entry in one application, you’ve added it in all of them! You can try this out by opening Excel or PowerPoint and typing in your initials or any of the AutoCorrect entries you added.

And yet I don’t use AutoCorrect!
That’s right, you heard me, I said I don’t use it.

Why? Because AutoCorrect only works within certain applications within the Microsoft Office suite. (It doesn’t work in Outlook, for example). I love AutoCorrect so much that I want it to work everywhere… in Internet Explorer, Dreamweaver, Quark Xpress, and so forth.

Spell Catcher Plus

Fortunately, I have found a program that does the same thing as AutoCorrect but it can work in any program you choose. It’s a program called Spell Catcher Plus, which was formerly made by Casady & Greene (now owned by RainMaker, Inc.- http://www.rainmakerinc.com/). It works basically the same way as AutoCorrect with automatic spell checking and text replacement. Likewise, you can add your own custom entries for shorthand words. But instead of being specific to certain applications, it runs in the background of the Windows operating system, so you can specify whether Spell Catcher is turned on or off in a given program. (I don’t have it activated when I am in Photoshop, for example, because I constantly type keyboard shortcuts there. Spell Catcher would try to correct my spelling constantly if it were turned on.) It’s a fabulous program and I highly recommend it! If you love AutoCorrect, then Spell Catcher will be like a dream come true!