Word: Autoformatting Options
Published on 14th November 2005
This month we are going to look at Word's ability to automatically format your text as you are typing. They can be very useful in making sure you haven't put in too many capital letters, and making it easy to create numbered lists but it is often an infuriating feature as your well planned intentions are ignored and Word does what it thinks is best.
Quick Tip: To easily start a numbered list, just type '1. ' - a 1, a full-stop and a space - at the beginning.
The two features that cause so many headaches are called AutoCorrect and AutoFormat As You Type. Autocorrect is designed to correct typos while AutoFormat AYT guesses about layout.
Quick Tip: Use Undo to reverse a change that Word has automatically made.
To check the settings for these give the following command:
Tools - Autocorrect Options (or just Tools - Autocorrect in earlier versions of Word).
Autocorrect and Exceptions
This displays a dialog box with tick-boxes for correcting various capitalisation errors. We would normally recommend that you leave this all 'on', but if you have names or acronyms you don't want changed, click the Exceptions button to add to a list of words that do not trigger the correction. For example, we were all taught to put a full stop after abbreviations, but Word will then capitalise the next word because it thinks you are starting a new sentence ("you've just put in a full stop haven't you?"), so add your favourite abbreviations to this list of Exceptions.
Autoformat As You Type
Another tab in the Autocorrect Options dialog box is AutoFormat As You Type. These are split into three lists of formats that are automatically applied.
Replace As You Type
These change characters you have typed in. For example, typing *word* is changed to word in bold text. It's a matter of your own taste whether you want these applied.
Apply As You Type
Changes the formatting of the paragraph style. They work as follows:
Type this and you get:
- * my point a bulleted list when you press [Enter] at the end of the line.
- 1. my point a numbered list.
- ---[Enter] a border across the page.
- +----+------+ a 2 column table (a plus for each vertical line and hyphens to set the column width).
The built-in Heading styles option will convert a paragraph to a big, bold heading when you press [Enter] twice.
AUTOMATICALLY AS YOU TYPE
These are other Auto options.
'Format beginning of list' applies when you are using the Apply as you type option to create a numbered list - it will continue the previous list.
You can use the [Tab] and [Backspace] keys to indent paragraphs, and
Word can create styles based on how you format your text.
All of these options can be very useful, especially when you know what to expect. Some people find them annoying, however, and the ones most often turned off are 'Built-in Heading styles' and 'Define styles based on your formatting'.
The idea is that these features save you time, and you can always use Undo when they do something you don't want, but for persistent offenders you can turn them off.