Getting Rid of an Unwanted AutoCorrect

Sue notes that she appears to have an unwanted shortcut, but doesn't know where it originated or how to get rid of it. Whenever she starts to type the phrase "your A/V tech," all is well up to "your A," but as soon as she adds the forward slash, it AutoCorrects to "you're A/V," changing "your" to "you're." As Sue types this phrase regularly, it becomes an annoying distraction.

What Sue is experiencing is actually built into Word; it is one of the predefined AutoCorrect entries. Before explaining how to fix it, though, it might be helpful to understand why this entry is built into the system.

Word assumes that "your" followed by the single-letter "a" is a mistake. "Your" is a pronoun, and it is virtually never used with the singular article "a". Consider, for example, the phrase "your a hermit" or "your a wonderful person." In both cases it should be the contraction "you're," not the pronoun "your." You can see this if you type Sue's phrase without the "A/V" contraction: "your audio-visual tech." In this case, Word did not AutoCorrect "your" to "you're." When you contract "audio-visual" to "A/V," the / triggers Word to believe that the foregoing "A" is a singular article and, so, the AutoCorrect entry is called into play.

Now, for how to fix it. You can follow these steps:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 and later versions display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. Click Proofing at the left side of the screen.
3. Click AutoCorrect Options. Word displays the AutoCorrect tab of the AutoCorrect dialog box.
4. Scroll through the list of AutoCorrect entries until you see the one for "your a". Select this entry. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The AutoCorrect tab of the AutoCorrect dialog box.

5. Click the Delete button. The AutoCorrect entry is removed from the list.
6. Click OK to close the AutoCorrect dialog box.
7. Close the Word Options dialog box.

That's it; Sue won't experience the problem anymore. That being said, Sue might not really want to delete this particular AutoCorrect entry because (unfortunately) people often mix up their usage of "your" and "you're," and removing the entry means that the cure might be worse than the original problem.

A better solution might be to leave the "your a" AutoCorrect entry in place and simply add your own special correction. Sue indicated that she types the "your A/V tech" phrase regularly, so she could create her own AutoCorrect entry to spell out the phrase. All she needs to do is to follow these steps:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 and later versions display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. Click Proofing at the left side of the screen.
3. Click AutoCorrect Options. Word displays the AutoCorrect tab of the AutoCorrect dialog box.
4. In the Replace box type something unique, such as "yavt" (without the quote marks).
5. In the Replace box type the phrase "your A/V tech" (again, without the quote marks).
6. Click the Add button. Word adds your entry to the long list it maintains.
7. Click OK to close the AutoCorrect dialog box.
8. Close the Word Options dialog box.

Now whenever Sue wants to use the phrase, all she has to do is type "yavt" and as soon as she types a space or a punctuation mark, what she typed is replaced with the phase "your A/V tech."

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13845) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365.