Word.Tips.Net Welcome toWord.Tips.Net

Helpful Links

Tips.Net Home
WordTips Home

Ask a Word Question
Make a Comment

Tips.Net Store

WordTips FAQ
WordTips Premium

Learn Access Now
Free Printable Forms

Beauty Tips
Car Tips
Cleaning Tips
College Tips
Cooking Tips
Excel2007 Tips
ExcelTips
Family Tips
Gardening Tips
Health Tips
Home Tips
Legal Tips
Money Tips
Organizing Tips
Pest Tips
Pet Tips
Wedding Tips
Word2007 Tips
WordTips

Advertise on the
WordTips Site

Newest Tips

Printing On Both Sides of the Paper

Turning Off AutoComplete for Dates

Ordering Search and Replace

Understanding Auto Line Spacing

Adding Comments to Your Document

Conditional Calculations in Word

Determining Word Frequency

 

Backing Up Your AutoCorrect Entries

Summary: AutoCorrect is a handy tool that corrects common misspellings as you type. If you've added quite a few entries to the AutoCorrect list, you may want to back up those entries in order to protect your time investment. This tip explains where you should look for AutoCorrect entries and how to back them up. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, and Word 2003.)

AutoCorrect is a very productive feature in Word that allows you to compensate for your inadequacies as a typist . Since it is possible to spend a great deal of time tweaking your AutoCorrect entries so they are just right, some WordTips readers have questioned how to back up the information in case they need to move it to a freshly formatted hard drive or a new install of Word.

AutoCorrect information is not only used by Word, but also by other Office applications such as Excel and PowerPoint. The result of this sharing means you need to look in several places to gather all the AutoCorrect information and back it up. AutoCorrect information that is shared between Office applications is stored in files with the ACL extension. If you want to make a copy of your shared AutoCorrect information, all you need to do is use Find File to locate files with this extension and copy them to a floppy or some other storage device.

In addition to the shared AutoCorrect entries, Word also uses its own special AutoCorrect features. This is for corrections that would not make sense in other Office programs, such as formatted text and graphics. These AutoCorrect entries are stored in templates, typically Normal.dot. According to some reports they can also be stored in other templates as well. If you want to make copies of this AutoCorrect information, simply make copies of any file with the DOT extension.

Finally, some AutoCorrect settings are only on/off settings. For instance, you can set whether Word capitalizes the names of days or corrects two initial capitals. These AutoCorrect settings are stored in the Windows Registry. If you want to make copies of this information, there is no real way to do it without copying at least a portion of the Registry. This, of course, could have severe repercussions when you later restore the Registry information in an attempt to reclaim the AutoCorrect settings.

Tip #1094 applies to Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Add a Professional Finishing Touch! Word includes great tools that allow you to add professional-grade finishing touches to your documents. You can add indexes, tables of contents, and other special tables by using the detailed information available in this volume.
 
Check out WordTips: Indexes and Special Tables today!