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 Non-Typed Text
You may need to regularly work with text that you didn't type. In those cases, you might want to use AutoCorrect to affect what is in that non-typed text. This tip discusses why that is only partially possible.

   AutoFormat Won't Convert a Right Arrow
Word can automatically convert different sequences of text characters into single-character symbols. It might appear that this capability is controlled by Word's AutoFormat feature, but it is actually controlled by a different feature—AutoCorrect.

   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.

   Automatic Italics of Newspaper Names
The AutoCorrect tool in Word is a great help in making sure that all instances of a name (such as a newspaper name) are formatted the same. This tip shows you how to set up the AutoCorrect entry and use it as you create your documents.

   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.

   Can't Save Formatted AutoCorrect Entries
How you go about creating an AutoCorrect entry can be an important part of what you can do with that entry. Here's an explanation of how to correctly create an AutoCorrect entry.

   Capitalizing after a Sentence Ending with a Number
Word tries its best to be helpful and correct what it thinks is wrong with your typing. One such correction is to capitalize the first letter of new sentences, as discussed in this tip.

   Controlling AutoComplete for Month Names
Word has a feature called AutoComplete which is helpful when typing some comment things, such as month names. This tip shows how to turn this feature on or off.

   Controlling Automatic Capitalization
When you start typing, do you ever notice those times that Word starts capitalizing words at the start of what it thinks are your sentences? If this drives you nuts, you have complete control over turning it on or off. Here's how.

   Correcting Capitalization with AutoCorrect
We all have idiosyncrasies that are evident in how we type. Word can compensate for a lot of these flubs, but it is helpful to understand how the correction tools work in order to best tailor them to our needs.

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

   Forcing a Word to Lowercase
In the prose you create, you may have certain words you might always want to be lowercase, even at the beginning of sentences. This tip shows you how you can use Word's AutoCorrect feature to ensure the words are lowercase as you desire.

   Formatting a Company Name
Want your company name to always appear in a particular formatted manner? Word provides two ways you can approach the task, as described in this tip.

   Getting Rid of an Unwanted AutoCorrect
Word uses its AutoCorrect feature to help improve your typing. Sometimes, however, AutoCorrect can cause problems with your typing. This tip examines one such scenario and explains what can be done about it.

   Getting the Proper Type of Ellipses
Type three periods in a row, and the AutoCorrect feature in Word kicks in to exchange that sequence for a special ellipses character. If you don't like the ellipses that Word uses, you can define your own using any number of methods.

   Importing AutoCorrect Entries
The AutoCorrect feature in Word can be very helpful not just for correcting misspellings, but also for expanding short keywords to longer text. If you develop a list of entries, you may wonder if it is possible to import those entries into your system. This tip looks at a couple of ways you can accomplish this task.

   Make AutoCorrect Pay Attention to Character Case
If you rely on AutoCorrect (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" AutoCorrect.

   Making AutoCorrect Automatically Recognize the Replace Word
When you select some text in your document and then display the AutoCorrect dialog box, it can seem a bit odd that sometimes the text appears in the "Replace" box and sometimes in the "With" box. This tip explains why this happens.

   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.

   Punctuation Marks that Don't End Sentences
Word tries its best to recognize when you've reached the end of a sentence and then helpfully capitalizes the first letter in what it thinks is a new sentence. What if you use punctuation marks that don't signal the end of a sentence? In that case, you have a few options that you can try.

   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.

   Smart Quotes in AutoCorrect Entries
Smart quotes can add a finishing touch to your text. You might expect that when AutoCorrect is used to add text, it would also include smart quotes. This is not necessarily so, for the reasons described in this tip.

   Special Symbols Followed by a Non-Breaking Space
When you want to automatically insert a special sequence of characters in a document, there are two methods you can use. This tip looks at using both AutoCorrect and Building Blocks to insert the characters.

   Stopping EHR from Correcting
When you type words into a document, Word can modify those words. If you don't want Word to make those modifications, then you'll want to check AutoCorrect to make some changes.

   Stopping Word from Changing Characters in an E-mail Address
When you type an e-mail address, Word generally recognizes it as such. What do you do, though, if Word changes the e-mail address on you to something that is incorrect? This tip discusses what may be happening in such situations.

   Transferring AutoCorrect Entries
One of the helpful tools in Word is AutoCorrect. If you spend a lot of time creating your own AutoCorrect entries, you may need to transfer them to different machine at some time. Here's how.

   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.

   Uppercase and Lowercase AutoCorrect Entries
AutoCorrect can be a great tool to correct, automatically, the typos and wording you enter in a document. Sometimes, though, the results of such corrections can be a bit unexpected. Here's an explanation of how AutoCorrect behaves based on how you set up the AutoCorrect entries.

   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.

   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.