Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated September 19, 2020)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
Brendan would like to know if there is a way to assign a shortcut of my choosing, say Ctrl+J, to a sentence. This would mean every time he hits Ctrl+J it would paste that sentence. Brendan knows about AutoText, but he can't see a way to assign a shortcut like Ctrl+J to a particular AutoText entry.
Actually, AutoText includes sort of a built-in shortcut key. Once you create the AutoText entry, you can type the mnemonic for the entry and press F3. Word expands the mnemonic to its longer form. If you want to have a special shortcut key for a particular AutoText entry, you can follow these steps:
Figure 1. The Customize Keyboard dialog box.
There are other options besides using AutoText, however. You could, of course, record a macro of you typing the desired text. The macro could then be assigned to a shortcut key and would be replayed (again typing the text) anytime you invoke the shortcut key.
Perhaps the easiest alternative, however, is to create an AutoCorrect entry for your text. All you need to do is come up with a non-ambiguous series of keystrokes, such as cj, and then have Word replace that text with something else. In other words, the program can "correct" the characters cj, replacing them with the longer sentence. There is no shortcut key to remember in this instance, just the short text you want "corrected." (How you create Autocorrect entries has been discussed in other issues of WordTips.)
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (6765) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Inserting Text with a Shortcut Key.
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