Auto text: What did Word 2002 do to it?

[Jonathan Sachs]

Another question that doesn't really fit "longdocs," but doesn't
really fit anywhere else either.

I have about a dozen autotext entries which I tend to use in every
type of document I write. I'm accustomed to insert one by pressing
"<Alt> I A X <name of autotext entry> <Enter>.

In Word 2002 it doesn't work. The autotext entries are there, all
right, but Word won't open the autotext dialog box. When I press
"<Alt> I A" I get a weirdly structured menu of autotext entries,
headed with the "autotext" item which should open the dialog box; then
I press "X" and get nothing. Word just closes the menu again. The same
thing happens if I click the "autotext" item with the mouse.

Have they changed the rules for this feature, too? Or is it just
broken?

My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi, Jonathan,

The feature hasn't changed, nor is it "broken" in the sense of
"buggy". But your installation may be damaged.

Try the procedure listed at
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/ProbsOpeningWord.htm -- even
though this isn't an "opening Word" problem, the same troubleshooting
steps will help you determine whether normal.dot or an add-in is
corrupted and causing the behavior.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

In addition to Jay's advice, note that (a) if the AutoText entry name is at
least four characters long (and you have AutoComplete enabled), you will get
an AutoComplete tip after you type the first four letters, and you can then
insert the entry by pressing Tab or Enter. And you can always insert
AutoText by typing the name of the entry and pressing F3. To create new
AutoText entries, press Alt+F3, then type the desired name.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

When there are no templates, there are, ipso facto, no autotext

entries, and perhaps Word intentionally does not open the dialog box

Not quite true. When you open Word with the /a switch, you load it without
your customized Normal.dot, Registry customizations, and global templates
and add-ins. This causes Word to use its built-in, hard-coded defaults,
*which include the built-in AutoText entries.* If you access the AutoText
dialog by any built-in method (not a custom keyboard shortcut), you will see
those entries.

Rebuilding the Registry Data key does not affect AutoText entries (which are
stored in Normal.dot or another template), macros, keyboard shortcuts,
styles, toolbar customizations, or any other customizations stored in
templates. It does affect the settings you've changed in Tools | Options and
Tools | AutoCorrect Options and AutoFormat As You Type. For more, see

What exactly does the Data Key in the Registry store?
I have been told I have a corrupt Data Key in my registry and need to delete
it; what settings will I lose; and can I back them up so I can restore them
later?
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Customization/DataKeySettings.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Jonathan Sachs]

In addition to Jay's advice, note that (a) if the AutoText entry name is at
least four characters long (and you have AutoComplete enabled), you will get
an AutoComplete tip after you type the first four letters, and you can then
insert the entry by pressing Tab or Enter. And you can always insert
AutoText by typing the name of the entry and pressing F3. To create new
AutoText entries, press Alt+F3, then type the desired name.

Thanks for letting me know that the Registry keys don't
affectautotext. Now I won't have to waste my energy looking for clever
ways to rebuild them without giving Word complete amnesia.

The F3 shortcut is probably an adequate substitute, although it forces
me to remember all the shortcuts I need to use. Also, how is it going
to tell the difference between the "--" shortcut (en dash) and the
"---" shortcut (em dash)? I really wish I could fix the problem
instead of working around it.

My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Jonathan

Am I missing something here? You want to do Alt-I A X <name of autotext>
Enter to insert an AutoText.

That is exactly the way Word 2002 works out of the box for me. Alt-I
opens up the Insert menu. The shortcut for AutoText is A. On the next
menu, the first item is AutoText... and its shortcut is x. I now see the
AutoCorrect dialog, open at the AutoText tab. I type the name of my
AutoText in the "Enter AutoText entries here" box. When Word finds the
match, the Insert button becomes the default. So I press Enter and Word
inserts the AutoText into my document.

Isn't that what you wanted? If Word 2002 isn't working like that for
you, then the menu bars have been customized. If that's the case, Tools

Options > Toolbars. Click Menu Bar and then Reset. That would remove

any customizations to the top menu bar and would return the menu bar to
its out-of-box condition.

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word
Melbourne, Australia

 

[Jonathan Sachs]

Am I missing something here? You want to do Alt-I A X <name of autotext>
Enter to insert an AutoText.

That is exactly the way Word 2002 works out of the box for me.

That is exactly the way it should work. On my system it does not. We
are trying to figure out why.

If Word 2002 isn't working like that for
you, then the menu bars have been customized.

I think you mean, the menu has been customized, but that is not the
problem. There is nothing wrong with the menu, except for the weird
structure of the entries under "Insert/Autotext"; the problem is that
the "Autotext" item does not open a dialog box as it should.

Resetting the menu system would be very disruptive (see my earlier
post about the Registry), but I tried resetting the Autotext item, and
it didn't help.

My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.

 

[Jonathan Sachs]

...how is it going
to tell the difference between the "--" shortcut (en dash) and the
"---" shortcut (em dash)?

I experimented with the F3 technique and found the answer: it knows
the difference if the shortcut characters are selected, and if they
aren't, it doesn't work at all.

This is a little more difficult to use than I expected. It is not
something I can do without breaking the rhythm of data input or
interrupting my train of thought, so it isn't going to be an
acceptable substitute for the menu, just a kludge to use until the
problem is solved.

My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Jonathan

So on your machine, when you do Insert > AutoText, a sub-menu pops up.
And that menu lists a lot of styles (Attention Line, Closing etc). But
the first item in that sub-menu is *not* AutoText... .

If that's so, and you've reset the menu bar, then maybe an add-in is
changing your menus. Have a look at
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Customization/CheckIfAddinsInstalled.htm
to see if there are any add-ins installed. Perhaps one of those is
interfering with your menus.

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word
Melbourne, Australia

 

[Jonathan Sachs]

So on your machine, when you do Insert > AutoText, a sub-menu pops up.
And that menu lists a lot of styles (Attention Line, Closing etc). But
the first item in that sub-menu is *not* AutoText... .

NO, you seem to be stuck on that idea, and I'm trying to explain that
it is not correct.

The first item in the submenu is Autotext, but when I select it, I do
not get a dialog box. The menu goes away, and nothing more happens.

My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Jonathan,

Now, regarding the possibly corrupted Data key in the Registry. The
instructions talk casually about possibly fixing problems by deleting
only the subkey for Settings, or Toolbars, etc.

If the article says the key ought to be deleted, then I consider that a
serious fault. It should advise the user to back up the key, first. I
suggest you send an article to the site administrator asking for this
to be changed...

Word won't open the autotext dialog box. When I press
"<Alt> I A" I get a weirdly structured menu of autotext entries,
headed with the "autotext" item which should open the dialog box; then
I press "X" and get nothing. Word just closes the menu again. The same
thing happens if I click the "autotext" item with the mouse.

Now, I may have missed something in all the various messages that follow
this, but: have you tried simply renaming Normal.dot to NormalOLD.dot,
then starting Word? If the menu works that will tell us there is a
problem in the menus or in the normal.dot template.

FWIW, the only way I'm able to duplicate what you're seeing is if the
document is in a state where it can't accept AutoText entries (protected
as a form, for example). So this does seem to indicate a problem with
document state or structure.

Cindy Meister

 

[Jonathan Sachs]

If the article says the key ought to be deleted, then I consider that a
serious fault. It should advise the user to back up the key, first. I
suggest you send an article to the site administrator asking for this
to be changed...

I'm going to pass on that because although the article was recommended
to me in this forum, it was really written for a different problem. I
don't know, perhaps deleting the key is really necessary for that
problem.

Now, I may have missed something in all the various messages that follow
this, but: have you tried simply renaming Normal.dot to NormalOLD.dot,
then starting Word? If the menu works that will tell us there is a
problem in the menus or in the normal.dot template.

I didn't try that, because the first suggestion I got in this forum
was to start Word with the "/a" switch, which, if I understand it
correctly, would do the same thing. I tried that, and it did not work.

But I tried renaming the normal template as you suggested, and it DID
work. So now, at least, I know what is wrong.

The next question is what to do about it. Deleting Normal.dot and
starting over would be about as destructive as deleting the Registry
key. I think I can use the Templates and Add-Ins Organizer to copy my
macros, Autotext entries and whatnot from the old template to a new
one. Is that likely to work, or will at leave part of the problem
unsolved, or create some new problem? Do you know of a better
approach?

My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you use endash and emdash as the names of the AutoText entries, then
typing enda and emda will trigger the AutoComplete tip. FWIW, I've long had
shortcut keys assigned to em and en dashes, and they are second nature for
me. If many of your AutoText entries are of this nature, you might consider
assigning shortcut keys to them.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Jonathan Sachs]

If you use endash and emdash as the names of the AutoText entries, then
typing enda and emda will trigger the AutoComplete tip. FWIW, I've long had
shortcut keys assigned to em and en dashes, and they are second nature for
me. If many of your AutoText entries are of this nature, you might consider
assigning shortcut keys to them.

The font led you astray. The em dash and en dash are the contents of
the Autotext entries, not the names. The names are "hyphen hyphen" and
"hyphen hyphen hyphen."

Cindy helped me identify the cause of the problem with the dialog box
(see other posts), so I hope it soon will not be important.

My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.

 

[Graham Mayor]

I'm going to pass on that because although the article was recommended
to me in this forum, it was really written for a different problem. I
don't know, perhaps deleting the key is really necessary for that
problem.

I suspect it may have been a link on my web site
http://www.gmayor.dsl.pipex.com/my_toolbars_are_missing.htm which referred
to the deletion of the toolbar sub key of the registry, but that page as you
indicated referred to a specific problem. I have however added the warning
Cindy referred to. Though for *that* task, it is not going to gain you
anything by backing it up.

I didn't try that, because the first suggestion I got in this forum
was to start Word with the "/a" switch, which, if I understand it
correctly, would do the same thing. I tried that, and it did not work.

But I tried renaming the normal template as you suggested, and it DID
work. So now, at least, I know what is wrong.

The next question is what to do about it. Deleting Normal.dot and
starting over would be about as destructive as deleting the Registry
key. I think I can use the Templates and Add-Ins Organizer to copy my
macros, Autotext entries and whatnot from the old template to a new
one. Is that likely to work, or will at leave part of the problem
unsolved, or create some new problem? Do you know of a better
approach?

Normal.dot, if corrupt, will cause any number of problems. When Word does
not see normal.dot in the location set in tools > options > file locations,
it will build a new default normal.dot. This will not, of course, contain
any of your personalisations that were stored in the older one. If you can
still open the old renamed one, then you can, as you have suggested use the
organizer to copy across those items that may be copied in this manner from
the old one to the new. This will not give you a perfect reconstruction, but
it is better than the alternative.

If Word has been crashing (I have been away from the newsgroups for a while
and have not seen the complete thread) then see also
http://www.gmayor.dsl.pipex.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm as
inevitably there will be some housekeeping tasks to attend to.

My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail (e-mail address removed)
Web site www.gmayor.dsl.pipex.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Jonathan,

But I tried renaming the normal template as you suggested, and it DID
work. So now, at least, I know what is wrong.

The next question is what to do about it. Deleting Normal.dot and
starting over would be about as destructive as deleting the Registry
key. I think I can use the Templates and Add-Ins Organizer to copy my
macros, Autotext entries and whatnot from the old template to a new
one. Is that likely to work, or will at leave part of the problem
unsolved, or create some new problem? Do you know of a better
approach?

The main thing you stand to lose are customizations made to your menubar
and the built-in toolbars that come with Word. That's one reason why
many users who've gone through this before take the time to reconstruct
the built-in toolbars as user-defined toolbars
(Tools/Customize/Toolbars/New) so that they will be available to copy
via the Organizer. It's also the reason people will save toolbar,
keyboard and AutoText in a template other than Normal.dot and put that
in their Startup folder to be loaded as an Addin. (Macros, too, that
don't need to be edited/changed.)

There's a tool at http://www.chriswoodman.co.uk to help you copy across
the keyboard customizations. But I don't know of any good way to pick up
menu customizations. You could TRY loading the older Normal.dot through
Tools/Templates and Addins as a global addin. There's an outside chance
that this might work (but I wouldn't place any bets on it).

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

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