How to suppress autotext US date format after typing current year

[Guest]

Simply typing the current year '2005' produces an autotext offer of the
current date in US format, e.g. '2005-02-08'. This is very inconvenient,
because by hitting return after typing a date in UK format, e.g. '8 February
2005', you get a crazy result like '8 February 2005-02-08'. I have Regional
settings and language settings both set to UK and UK English respectively.
Please tell me how I can suppress this particular autotext feature. Many
thanks.

 

[Andra]

btw - what’s the language of the text?

Bagrat wrote

 

[Guest]

English (UK) - set in Normal.dot and in Regional settings (Control Panel).
Also inputting using UK English language & keyboard settings in system tray.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Unfortunately, there is no real cure for this annoyance. Obviously, you can
prevent it by turning off AutoComplete, but that's a pretty draconian
approach. The next-best solution is to get into the habit of pressing the
spacebar before Enter or Tab so that the "correction" doesn't fire. Another
approach is to create templates with CreateDate fields in them so that you
don't have to type the date. Incidentally, the date format Word forces on
you is not a common U.S. one, either and is equally inconvenient here.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

Many thanks for your advice - the CreateDate approach sounds like the best
solution.

 

[Guest]

"Inconvenience" and "annoyance" are too mild for this maddening feature of
Word. Surely someone at MS should have realised by now that it is not clever
to program Word to automatically create impossible forms like "3 November
2005.11.03" and "November 3, 2005.03.11". But I gather that this nonsense
has been carried forward to Word 2003.

But there is a workaround, which works for me in Word 2002.

The problem typically arises where the date appears in the form "3 November
2005" or "November 3, 2005" at the end of a paragraph and it is therefore
followed by a fullstop (period) after which one presses Enter. Suzanne has
already mentioned that one can prevent this nonsense by adding a space after
the fullstop, and the addition of the space can be automated by using
Autocorrect and entering "2005." in the Replace column and "2005. " (ie with
a space added) in the With column. (In both caes the quotes are omitted.)

The nonsense only happens in relation to the current year so one need only
create an entry for the current year, although it would make sense to do so
for, say, the next five years by which time MS is bound to have come to its
senses.

This workaround doesn't solve the problem where 2005 is followed by Enter
(or Tab) without a fullstop, and a similar autocorrect entry for this
situation could be more of a nuisance than a help. But this situation is
probably a fairly rare occurrence for most users, especially seeing that the
autocomplete of the date does not operate in tables.

Ken

 

[peter]

And further to this can anyone tell me how to get the templates in Word 2007
to display English format dates once you select "today" in the drop down date
box. I have all the usual settings corrected to ensure the whole damn system
is default English for all date, time settings etc.

Thanks.

 

[Graham Mayor]

The language settings of a document are formatting parameters of that
document. The date drop down merely reflects the language at the cursor
point (as indicated by the language box top right of the drop down dialog).
You would need to select all the document and apply UK English and modify
the language parameters of the paragraph styles of the template for an
American designed template to be truly UK English.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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