Hands on: Autotext unmasked

One of the fundamental features of any word processor is the facility to insert often used or ‘boilerplate’ text.

I could do this in 1985 on my first business computer – an Amstrad PCW (no relation). Word calls this feature Autotext and, although it’s a very handy feature, its implementation and obfuscated interface leave a lot to be desired.

If you go to Insert, Autotext, Autotext… in any version of Word from 97 to 2003, you’ll see a list of predefined words and phrases you can drop into your document by double-clicking on them. Most of these make you wonder why you bothered. Is it really slower for even the least gifted typist to type ‘Subject:’ than it is to go to Insert, Autotext, Autotext… and scroll down the list?

In fact, it’s a little cleverer than that if you have the ‘Show AutoComplete suggestions’ box ticked. If you type the first few letters of a word or phrase that is an Autotext entry, you should get a screen tip pop-up with the whole word or phrase – pressing Enter will complete it. This doesn’t always seem to happen, but usually you can achieve the same end without the screen tip by typing the first few letters followed by F3.

You may still want to prune the entries, however, unless you spend so much time writing to ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ that pressing F3 after the first two words is going to save you a heap of effort. You can get rid of any entries by selecting them and pressing the Delete button. Don’t be too ruthless just yet as there are one or two valuable nuggets among all the ‘Dear Sir’ and ‘Cordially’ dross.

Where it all gets much more interesting is in creating your own Autotext entries. Select a block of text, then go to Insert, Autotext, Autotext… and you’ll see the selected text in the Preview pane and the first few words in the ‘Enter Autotext entries here’ box. Overtype the latter with a mnemonic shortcut – for instance ‘me’ for your name and address – then click the Add button. This will add the entry to the Normal.dot template, or you can specify a different template from the ‘Look in:’ box. So, whenever you are creating a document using that template, typing ‘me’ followed by F3 will produce your name and address.

Once you’ve got the hang of this you’ll probably find it more convenient to use the Autotext Toolbar. You can create entries by selecting text and hitting the New button – you’ll be prompted for a name for the new entry. This is the same as the ‘Enter Autotext entries here’ box – the name you choose, followed by F3 will insert the entry, so keep it short and memorable.

Unlike the dialogue box, the toolbar groups Autotext entries, as does the rest of the Autotext sub-menu. All the ‘Dear Sir’ stuff is under Salutations, the ‘Respectfully yours’ under Closings, and so on.

Entries you’ve created yourself will be listed – for reasons I can’t quite fathom – under the style in which they were created. However, you can manipulate this feature to create your own toolbar sub-menu. First, create a new style with the name you want for the sub-menu. Using this style, create the individual Autotext entries you want listed under it. There’s a little problem here as once you are ‘in’ that style, you’ll only see the style’s Autotext entries in the toolbar. You’ve also got a style that you don’t really need. So delete the style and make sure you save the template changes when you close Word. Restart Word and you’ll find that even though the style is gone, its menu entry in the Autotext toolbar survives.

Despite the name, Autotext isn’t limited to text. You can include graphics, text boxes, fields, equations and more. Inserting fields as Autotext can save a lot of time - some, such as page numbers and the filename of the current document are already set up. You can, of course, add your own from all the Word fields available, which saves a lot of digging through dialogues if you use certain fields frequently.

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