[Originally appeared 1999.]
AutoText can be a very powerful element of a well planned Word environment for a law firm or other large organization. Frequently used names and phrases, letterhead mastheads, office addresses, logos, signature blocks, court captions and notarization paragraphs are just some of the types of material that can be stored as AutoText and should be maintained in standard text and format throughout the organization.
At the same time, AutoText can be a very effective personal tool, allowing users to store their own favorite phrases. In a large organization, we would like to enable users not only to personalize Word this way, but have it travel with them if they work on different computers. If more than one person works on the same computer, we would like each to have their own personal AutoText collection.
Word does not make achieving this goal easy.In fact, we have run into some traps trying to get there, and hope this and following columns promote a sharing of techniques to achieve it.
The key issue is where to store the AutoText entries. Word stores AutoText in templates. The fastest way to store an AutoText entry is to select the text, then press ALT F3 (with default keyboard assignments). This stores the entry in Normal.dot. That’s not the best place for an organization’s standard AutoText entries. We recommend they be stored in a separate Global Template. Let’s call it “OrgNameAutoText.dot” where OrgName should be replaced by initials or other name used for the organization in naming templates. That template should be maintained centrally and distributed to users, or kept in a network location. (That’s a topic for a column or two.)
Why not just incorporate these into Normal.dot? One reason is to share the organization standard AutoText entries, while allowing users to keep their own. Putting the organization wide AutoTexts into OrgNameAutoText.dot and allowing users to store theirs in Normal.Dot gets part of the way. Another, perhaps more important, reason, to keep AutoText entries (and, perhaps, nearly all customization) out of Normal.dot is that Normal.dot gets damaged from time to time, under virus attack or otherwise, and must be erased and replaced. This argues against storing personal AutoText entries in Normal.dot.
That leads to directing users to create their personal AutoText entries in a Personal.dot also to be loaded as a Global Template. The ALT F3 technique won’t do that. (By the way, the “New” button on the AutoText toolbar does the same thing.) AutoText entries also can be stored using the AutoText tab on the Tools|AutoCorrect dialog. The “AutoText” button in the first position on the standard AutoText toolbar opens this dialog pointed directly to the correct tab. At the bottom of the screen is an item titled “Look in:” That points to the template in which the AutoText entries are stored.
One needs the right rhythm here. If… a Personal.dot template has been implemented and is loaded as a global template and … if the user changes “Look in:” from “All active templates” to “Personal.dot,” … then Word will store the entry in Personal.dot.
This is too hard!
Can a macro come to the rescue? Yes, but not as easily as we would like. Word dialogs invite the macro writer to help the user by making these kind of detailed and confusing setting changes automatically. Here we would like to change Look in: to personal.dot while storing the personal AutoText, then change it back to All active templates immediately. Otherwise the organization standard AutoText entries will not be accessible. Word 97 does not have a macro setting that supports control of this dialog element, although many other dialogs do allow such control. I have not found a resolution in my explorations of Word 2000, and would welcome direction to one if it exists.
In future issues we’ll explore other macro strategies for AutoText support. We will look at the issues relating to portability of AutoText and multiple users on the same machine. We look forward to hearing about your experience.
This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch. Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.