Auto Texts...

[Duncan McC]

I got this curly question from a client that has a small LAN (18 users).
They run Office 2002 (XP), on XP Pro machines.

The "upgrade" referred to in the question was a RAM upgrade, and I don't
believe it is related, however I've posted the whole message as I
receieved it.

Could the normal.dot have got corrupted? Can I suggest she does a Save
As and overwrite the normal.dot (ie would this help fix any corruption)?

Cheers in advance - here is the user's question:

Since the last upgrade, my auto texts havn't been working as they used
to. The infomation is still under "Insert", Auto Texts" etc, however, I
used to put the code in and then press F3. This doesn't work anymore.
Is there some box that needs to be activated to fix this?

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Does she have a keyboard with an F Lock key?

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Duncan McC]

Pretty sure it doesn't. Thanks.

 

[Graham Mayor]

While Doug's suggestion is the most likely cause, it is possible that
normal.dot has become corrupt, but you cannot create a new one using 'save
as'. Only Word can create normal.dot and it will do so when normal.dot is
not found in the User Templates folder. Start by renaming that file to (say)
normal.old and restart Word. If that doesn't fix it - see
http://www.gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm then
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProblemsStartingWord.htm.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>

 

[Duncan McC]

Does she have a keyboard with an F Lock key?

I have confirmed she does not.

I searched for the F3 shortcut in my Word 2007 help, and nothing really
came up - found Alt-F3, Shift-F3 etc etc - but not F3 by itself.
(Remember she's using Office 2002 (XP) though).

As a workaround, she has relabelled her Auto-Text entries, so that say:
s = <sometext>

is now a bit longer, four chars min, say becomes:
sand = <the text>

And it now auto-prompts to complete the auto-text entry upon typing the
fourth character.

She'd still kinda like it to work the old way - and we are stumped as to
why the F3 key no longer 'forces' the autocomplete (or whatever it was
meant to do).

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Note that neither AutoComplete nor F3 will work until you have typed four
*unique* characters. If all her AutoText entry names begin with the same
characters, then she'd have to type past those to get something unique.

 

[Duncan McC]

Note that neither AutoComplete nor F3 will work until you have typed four
*unique* characters. If all her AutoText entry names begin with the same
characters, then she'd have to type past those to get something unique.

The old ones were all unique, but just one character, eg 's', 't', etc
etc.

So she used to go, 's', F3 - done.

Now she has had to change that to a four char entry, and use
autocomplete, ie, 'sand' ... autocomplete brings up the entry and
<Enter>.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

This still works for me. I have an AutoText entry named "lorem," and I can
type just the initial l and press F3 and get the AutoText entered.

 

[Duncan McC]

This still works for me. I have an AutoText entry named "lorem," and I can
type just the initial l and press F3 and get the AutoText entered.

Thanks Suzanne, this is exactly what the user doesn't get anymore.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Look over the list of AutoText entries and see whether there are any
duplicated letters (and of course whether the entries are still present).

 

[Duncan McC]

Look over the list of AutoText entries and see whether there are any
duplicated letters (and of course whether the entries are still present).

Thanks, checked the former, will check the later.