If you want to use shortcuts to replay this entry, choose a short one-word name. It can include letters, numbers, or spaces. First, enter a unique name for the auto text entry. All of these reusable blocks of content are also called building blocks.Ī faster way to get to the same place is with the keyboard shortcut alt f3. Look for the quick part gallery to create, store, and reuse pieces of content including auto text, document properties like title and author and fields. Your entry could include formatting text and images and then go to insert in the text group. Next, select the phrase, sentence, or portion you want to store as a reusable auto text entry. When you select show/hide it displays paragraph marks and other non-printing characters. Make sure the show/hide option is enabled. To create an auto text entry, you need to open a document that contains the text or graphics you want to use in other word documents.
If you are tired of creating the same blocks of text such as company name and address in Microsoft Word, you can use Auto Text. Illustration ©iStockPhoto.How to Create and Edit Auto text Entry in Microsoft Word If you can get a set of building blocks like this you can use over and over again, you’ll find your document creation becomes a lot faster.Ĭlick here to read more of Deborah’s Microsoft Office tips. I hope you find this tip useful for inserting pieces of text that you use frequently. You could do the same if you have a set of objections that may differ from one another that you will reuse - and you can do this for any text that you use frequently. I could define several of these objections and call them and so on. When I type a little prompt pops up right above the letters that say “Press Enter to insert.” If I hit the Enter key, that text is inserted there automatically. Now I’m going to delete this text on the screen to show you how this works. And, because I want this AutoText to insert this into the middle of an existing paragraph, I’m going to leave this set as “Insert Content Only” as opposed to “Insert Content in Its Own Paragraph,” and then click OK to create the AutoText. I’m going to leave this entry in the General category in my building blocks. I’m using because that is not something I would type in the normal course of working, so it’s safe to use as an AutoText prompt. Word will try to name this building block based on the text it sees, but you can type anything you want, as long as it’s at least four characters and it’s something distinct you can remember. Once you’ve selected the text, go to the Insert tab, go over to Quick Parts, go down to AutoText and then click Save Selection to AutoText Gallery, which brings up the Create New Building Block dialog box. Remember: Back off of that “end of paragraph” marker (use Shift + left arrow) because that’s going to embed a hard return in the AutoText. Use the left mouse button to select all this text. This is important because you want to make sure that when you copy text into AutoText you’re not picking up the end of paragraph symbol, which a) starts a new line and b) contains paragraph formatting information that you don’t want to be embedded in the AutoText entry. To avoid a formatting mess, the first thing I’m going to do is go to the Home tab to turn on Show/Hide so I can see the “end of paragraph” symbol. Rather than having to search for another example of it and cut and paste it, or type it all out yourself, you can program AutoText to do this for you. This comes in really handy with a repetitive phrase you use often. I want to save this so that when I type the letters Word will automatically offer to type this entire phrase into my document. In this video, you will see that I’ve got a standard discovery objection already typed out.
Saving frequently repeated phrases or paragraphs to an easily accessible place is key to using text recycling to create or edit Word documents faster.