Office XP Tips: AutoCorrect and Paste Options Buttons

Every once in a while, a simple and elegant solution comes along that makes you wonder where its been all your life. No, I'm not talking about butter you can spray; I'm talking about the new AutoCorrect and Paste Options buttons in Office XP. If you share data among programs or let Office play fast and loose with its AutoCorrect capabilities, you've probably bumped into these new buttons. But if you haven't examined their potential, you don't know what you're missing.

The AutoCorrect and Paste Options buttons are helpful little icons that pop up unobtrusively (unlike a certain paper clip that shall remain nameless) to offer help based on what you're doing at the time. The AutoCorrect button, which invokes the AutoCorrect Options box under the Tools menu, lets you override or turn off unwanted changes on the fly. The Paste Options button fires up Office's enhanced paste capabilities to help you quickly format inserted text.

What I really like about these tools is how inconspicuous they are. If a button appears and you aren't tempted by its wiles, just go on with your business and it will disappear. If you want to see what it has to offer, click its drop-down arrow--you're likely to find something helpful. Here's a closer look at these helpful features.

Correct This, Buster

Word's AutoCorrect feature has been bailing out poor spellers for a long time now. It automatically corrects commonly misspelled words and inserts symbols such as ® and © when you type (R) and (C). It even converts emoticons into smiley faces for those who are incapable of expressing emotion with mere words alone.

To see the complete list of the changes AutoCorrect will make, choose Tools, AutoCorrect Options, and scroll through the list in the "Replace text as you type" window. If there's a mistake you routinely make that's not on the list, enter it and click the Add button.

Most of the time, this feature is extremely helpful. But what if you don't want so much help? That's where XP's new AutoCorrect button comes to the rescue. Whenever AutoCorrect makes a change, just hover your mouse over it and a small blue underline appears on screen. Point at the underline and it changes into a button you can click for a pop-up menu of options. You can use this menu to override that particular AutoCorrection or jump to the AutoCorrect dialog box for further tweaking.

By the way, if you're a fast typist and don't want to reach for the mouse, you can bypass the AutoCorrect button by backspacing over the offending AutoCorrection. If it's a symbol, just press Backspace once to undo the AutoCorrection. If it's a word that AutoCorrect considers misspelled, backspace through it, retype the "misspelled" word, and Word won't automatically correct it a second time.

Get Pasted

If you paste a lot of information from Web pages and e-mail messages into Office documents, or routinely copy-and-paste text between Office applications, you're going to love Paste Options. It's a little button that appears whenever you choose Edit, Paste, when you drag and drop, or when you press Ctrl-V to paste. I'm a Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V-er from way back and my first inclination was to blow right paste the Paste Options button. It's easy to miss because it conveniently disappears if you keep typing. But just click on the button and this handy little devil presents a pop-up menu that lets you choose how you want to format what you just pasted. The Paste Options button doesn't replace the Paste Special command; it adds a new function and makes others more accessible.

For example, you can keep the copied text's original formatting, match the destination formatting, or paste the text only. That last option is extremely useful when transporting text from a Web page or e-mail message. By choosing text-only, you can leave behind the formatting of the HTML e-mail or Web page and get just the goods you were after. If you don't like any of those options and want to format the text yourself, you can choose the Apply Style or Formatting command to open the Style & Formatting Task Pane. Awesome, eh?

But wait, there's more. If you paste Excel data into a Word document, the Paste Options button lets you link the data. If you choose one of the linking options, then later update your Excel file, the changes automatically update in Word as well. What a great time to be alive.