Microsoft® Word 2007 Bible

Chapter 14. AutoCorrect

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Built-in versus do-it-yourself AutoCorrect

• Plaint text versus formatted AutoCorrect

• AutoCorrect limits

• Math AutoCorrect

AutoCorrect refers to Word's capability to automatically change what you type into something else. What's that? You thought that that was called editing? Nah. That's something else entirely.

AutoCorrect actually refers to a collection of features that all reside under one umbrella. At its most basic level, even without your doing anything, Word can correct typos just as quickly as you can type them. If you type "recieve," practically before you can blink, Word changes it into receive. Well, I lied. There is something you have to do for it to work. You have to press some kind of word separator, such as a comma, space, period, slash, dash, a quote, or any of a host of other characters, to signal to Word that you've finished typing that word. In fact, it took effort to keep the incorrect version of receive from being AutoCorrected. Let's hope the editors realize that it was deliberately misspelled and don't fix it!

Built-in Corrections

Word comes with a host of built-in AutoCorrect pairs—common misspellings and their corrected counterparts. By default, Word uses them to correct your mistakes. For example, if you type "abscence," Word corrects it to absence.

Word has additional AutoCorrections it can perform as well. They are shown in Figure 14.1. To display this dialog box, choose Office

Figure 14.1. AutoCorrect refers to a number of ...