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Making AutoText fit

category : office XP and office 2003 : AutoText

Akhil wrote from India this morning to ask this question, and I thought it might be something helpful to share. The question was how can you make AutoText fit the format of the rest of your document? It's a great thing to be able to insert sentences, boilerplate text, and what-have-you into your document easily, but how much time does it save if you have to go back into it and reformat everything each time? Here are the steps for creating AutoText entries that fit your favorite styles:

1. Insert the AutoText entry into the document as usual.

2. Turn paragraph marks on by clicking the Show/Hide tool in the Standard toolbar (this will cause the paragraph symbols to appear at the end of each paragraph)

3. Highlight the AutoText entry you just placed in your document and make any necessary formatting changes (click Body text, Normal, or whatever style you want to use).

4. Select the AutoText entry and be sure to include the ending paragraph mark in the selection (this is what preserves the formatting changes).

5. Open the Insert menu, choose AutoText, and select New.

6. Type the name of the original AutoText entry and press Enter.

7. A dialog box asks whether you want to save the revised AutoText Entry. Click Yes.

8. The entry is resaved with the new formatting changes you added. The modified AutoText entries are stored in the Normal category of the AutoText menu.