Pages

Monday 17 October 2016

When Office Autocorrect goes bad

If you use MS Office's autocorrect function a lot, then, like me, you may have found a few glitches in the autocorrect library entries from time to time.

One peculiar issue I discovered was that autocorrect would ignore some correction entries. I had one that was supposed to correct "weren' " to "weren't". However, it constantly corrected it to "weren't't".

Trying to get rid of an over-active autocorrect entry proved to be very difficult! However, once I realised that the second apostrophe was in a different format or font from the first one, it gave me the key to fixing the problem.

The problem arises when I copy in errors from Word and create my own custom entries in autocorrect. What happens is the formatting gets copied too, and it changes how Word 'sees' the entry.

While you can export your ACL file - that's the master Word autocorrect list - it is difficult to search and edit. It is easier to make the changes within the Word autocorrect function itself.

The solution for autocorrect errors is not elegant, but it is practical.

Key a typo. Right-click over the typo and Simply delete ALL the were/weren't entries from your list, note down the ones you want to keep and manually re-enter those ones.

The manual entry gets rid of inadvertently imported formatting.

Problem solved.


Sam

No comments :

Post a Comment

Thanks for your feedback. The elves will post it shortly.