AutoCorrect is a useful tool in Word for applying specific formatting or spelling for certain phrases often used in your text. Word pays attention to how you habitually type corrections and imitates your habits to make future typing easier on you. Learn how to take advantage of AutoCorrect and adjust the settings to your preferences with the following articles.

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'AutoCorrect' topic. Click the article''s title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

   Adding Ampersands to Custom Dictionaries
It appears that Word doesn't allow you to define custom dictionary entries that include ampersands. There are ways you can work around this apparent problem, including a way that relies on AutoCorrect to mark your text so it is ignored by the proofing tools.

   AutoCorrecting for Your Common Errors
AutoCorrect is a great way to correct your spelling, particularly if you misspell the same words over and over. Here's a quick way to configure AutoCorrect for your commonly misspelled words.

   Automatic AutoCorrect Exceptions for Beginning Sentences
When automatically capitalizing the beginning of sentences, Word relies on how you historically have done your typing. This can cause some problems, as detailed in this tip.

   Automatic Initial Capitals in Tables
Have you ever started typing words in a table, only to find that Word automatically capitalizes the first word in each cell? This is a part of AutoCorrect, but you can control this behavior.

   Automatically Capitalizing Day Names
Type the name of any of the seven days into your document, and Word automatically makes sure it is capitalized. This is done by the AutoCorrect feature, and you can turn it on or off, as desired.

   Backing Up Your AutoCorrect Entries
Develop a lot of AutoCorrect entries and you may start to wonder how you can back them up. You can easily protect all the time you used creating the entries by applying the information in this tip.

   Easily Inserting a Section Mark
Section marks are used regularly in the writings of some industries, such as in legal documents. If you need a way to easily add section marks to your documents, consider using the AutoCorrect feature to do the adding for you.

   Editing AutoCorrect ACL Files
Information used with the AutoCorrect feature is stored in what is known as an ACL file. You normally edit this file by using the various AutoCorrect editing commands in an Office product like Word. In some instances, it would be easier to edit the file directly, but how to do this is not readily apparent. This tip discusses your options for directly editing the file.

   Emoticons in Word
Like to add a smiley or two to your writing? Word makes it easy through creative use of the AutoCorrect feature.

   Enforcing a Do-Not-Use Word List
Got a list of words you don't want to appear in your documents? There are a number of ways that you can make sure they don't, and the method you choose depends on personal preference and the nature of the words.

   How Word Handles Abbreviations
Abbreviations appear all over the place in our society. If you want to understand how Word recognizes them (which it has to do for some AutoCorrect features), then you'll want to read this tip.

   Importing AutoCorrect Entries
The AutoCorrect feature in Word is quite handy, but getting a lot of entries into the feature can be tedious. This tip provides a macro that will allow you to enter entries quite a bit faster.

   Make AutoCorrect Pay Attention to Character Case
If you rely on AutoText (as most Word users do), you may have noticed that it doesn't always give the desired results with text replacements. This can come about when the tool becomes confused by the letters you are typing. This tip examines ways that you can "unconfuse" AutoText.

   Making Sure Word Doesn't Capitalize Anything Automatically
Word, in an effort to be helpful, will often change the capitalization of the words you type. If you tire of Word's second-guessing, here's how to make sure that the capitalization stays as you originally typed.

   Managing the AutoCorrect List
If you need to delete all the entries in your AutoCorrect list, the easiest way to do so is with a macro. This tip describes just such a macro.

   Printing a List of AutoCorrect Entries
Want a printed record of the AutoCorrect entries you've created in Word? There is no built-in way to do it, but you can use the short macro presented in this tip to get just the printout you need.

   Printing AutoCorrect Entries
If you want to print a list of all the AutoCorrect entries in your document, Word doesn't provide a method. You can use the macro in this tip to create your own list for printing, however.

   Removing Confusion When Using AutoCorrect
AutoCorrect is a great help when writing, as it can allow you to create regular blocks of text easily. This can cause problems, however, if the text being replaced is used for other purposes in the document. Here's an easy way to avoid confusion and only replace what you want replaced.

   Replacing All AutoCorrect Entries
Word's AutoCorrect feature can be a great tool to improve your writing. Depending on the type of writing you do, you may need a way to periodically replace all your AutoCorrect entries with a new set of entries. Here are some ideas on how you can accomplish this task.

   Shortcut for AutoCorrect Dialog Box
There is no built-in keyboard shortcut that will display the AutoCorrect dialog box. This doesn't mean that there aren't a variety of approaches you can use to create your own shortcuts—both keyboard and toolbar—for displaying the desired dialog box.

   Spelling Errors Resulting from Erroneous Spaces
Spelling errors can result from improperly ordering letters in a word, or from adding spaces where they shouldn't be. This tip examines how you can correct spelling errors when you add those extra spaces in the middle of words.

   Superscripted Registered Trademark Symbol
Word, by default, includes an AutoCorrect entry that converts (r) to a registered trademark symbol. The problem is, the symbol is not superscripted. Here's how to correct that problem and get the symbol positioned just like you need it.

   Toggling AutoCorrect Settings
If you need to turn AutoCorrect on or off, there is no built-in way to easily do it in Word. You can create your own toggle command, however, as described in this tip.

   Turning Off Capital Corrections
If you type two capital letters at the beginning of a word, Word assumes that you made a typing error and will attempt to correct your mistake. If you don't want Word to make this assumption, you can turn off this AutoCorrect feature.

   Two Keys with the Press of One
Sometimes it could be helpful to have Word substitute two characters for the one that you type, for instance to replace a slash with a slash followed by a no-width optional space. (This could possibly help in the proper breaking of information between lines in Word.) This can be accomplished with AutoCorrect, but you may want to carefully think through the change before doing it, as discussed in this tip.

   Using AutoCorrect to Start Macros
As you are typing, AutoCorrect provides a "check" that what you are entering doesn't match some pre-defined error triggers. The idea is to make sure your text reflects what you intended to write, rather than what you really wrote. This tip discusses the concept of whether AutoCorrect can be used to not only "fix" what you type, but also start macros that could do even more processing.

   Using AutoText and AutoCorrect Effectively
AutoText and AutoCorrect are closely related tools that can help you improve the productivity of your typing. This tip explains how you can use these tools most effectively in your usage of Word.

   Word Won't Capitalize Some Sentences
By default, Word capitalizes the first letter of sentences as you type. If you notice that Word doesn't capitalize some sentences that it should, the reason could be as described in this tip.