Autocorrect and corrupted fonts in W2003

[KennyT]

Hi,

My wife makes extensive use of autocorrect (or is it autotext, the two
tables seem interconnected?) where she works as a secretary for multiple
companies (so, for example, she has one for each company which, by just
typing a couple of characters, she can just put in their address as a
"footer" depending on who she's replying on behalf of).

Everything works fine most of the time but then the text starts to get
"corrupted", mostly by unwanted changes in font midway though the inserted
text. So she corrects and swipes the text, goes into the autocorrect table
and replaces the corrupted text and things are fine until, inevitably, they
start to get screwed up again.

Anyone else had this? Better yet, anyone know why it happens? Best of all,
anyone know how to stop it?

TIA

K

 

[Stefan Blom]

Hi,

My wife makes extensive use of autocorrect (or is it autotext, the two
tables seem interconnected?) where she works as a secretary for multiple
companies (so, for example, she has one for each company which, by just
typing a couple of characters, she can just put in their address as a
"footer" depending on who she's replying on behalf of).

The difference between AutoCorrect and AutoText is explained here:
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/customization/AutoText.htm.

Everything works fine most of the time but then the text starts to get
"corrupted", mostly by unwanted changes in font midway though the inserted
text. So she corrects and swipes the text, goes into the autocorrect table
and replaces the corrupted text and things are fine until, inevitably, they
start to get screwed up again.

Anyone else had this? Better yet, anyone know why it happens? Best of all,
anyone know how to stop it?

Your wife may want to create the AutoText entries without direct character
formatting (select the text and press Ctrl+SpaceBar); that way, the font
shouldn't change unexpectedly when inserting entries.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

 

[KennyT]

Thanks Stefan.

Unfortunately, the the various companies all have "particular" fonts for
their company name (and the bosses like to have a 'signature-like' font for
their names). Do I take it from your reply that this is a known bug with
formatted text?

K

 

[Stefan Blom]

No, it's not a bug; I apologize for not being clear in my previous reply.

What happens when you insert an AutoText or a formatted AutoCorrect entry
(or when you paste text between documents) depends on styles as well as on
direct formatting of text.

By default, when inserting an AutoText entry formatted in, say, Normal
style, the formatting of Normal in the target document will be used. This
explains why the font or other character formatting might change.

On the other hand, if the AutoText includes direct formatting (such as a
font applied on top of the paragraph style), that formatting should be
preserved when inserting the AutoText.

 

[KennyT]

OK, then perhaps I can explain further (bit tricky without formatting in
this message!)...

Some of my wife's entries are things like 'invoice tearoffs'.

e.g.

Dear...

Thank you for your order, please find attached your invoice

(auto insert invoice tearoff ->)

------------------------------------------------------------------
Invoice

Item
Amount

Please make cheque payable to blah blah blah

------------------------------------------------------------------

What happens is that, for example, just one of the words (e.g 'payable' or
'to') changes font (so changes from Arial to Times New Roman, for example) so
the tearoff looks like this (where the CAPITALised word represents the change
in font):


Dear...

Thank you for your order, please find attached your invoice

(auto insert invoice tearoff ->)

------------------------------------------------------------------
Invoice

Item
Amount

Please make cheque PAYABLE to blah blah blah

------------------------------------------------------------------

However, she does use different .DOT files for the various companies, so
perhaps that's the cause of the problem. When she's next at work (later in
the week), and she has the problem, I've asked her to try opening up a
document based on different templates to see if it's a problem for all, or
just some of them.

So, unless you happen to know what's causing it, let's wait until she's done
that experiment...

Many thanks.

K

 

[Stefan Blom]

It is strange that only a single word in a paragraph is affected. Asking
your wife to test if it happens with all or just a specific template is a
good place to start. If something turns out to be wrong with a particular
template, it should be easy enough to recreate it.

 

[KennyT]

My suspicion, at the moment, is that some 'autocorrect' strings are stored
twice, once in normal.dot and once (slightly corrupted) in a particular
letterhead.dot. So the corrupted string only gets chosen in particular
templates. The experiment should verify that. She's back at work tomorrow...

K

 

[KennyT]

OK, as suspected, the autocorrect works in a blank document (normal.dot) but
not in a specific letterhead.dot. So, assuming there is a corrupted
autocorrect entry in the letterhead.dot file, how should she remove it?

K

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Since AutoCorrect is saved only in Normal.dot (if formatted) or .acl files
(if unformatted), I don't see how any could be stored in a letterhead.dot.

 

[KennyT]

OK, I'm still unsure whether I'm correctly referring to this as autocorrect
or autotext. Are autotext entries possibly stored in individual .DOTs?

K

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Yes, AutoText entries can be stored in specific templates. They cannot be
stored in documents. If an AutoText entry were saved in both a specific
template and in Normal.dot, the likelihood is that you would see it listed
twice on the AutoText menu.

 

[KennyT]

OK...

Here's the scoop.

All the autotext entries are in Normal.dot and are only in Normal.dot.

When working in an ordinary document, the auto-insertion works perfectly.
When working in a 'letterhead' document, the auto-insertion gets corrupted.

From the tests I've been able to run, only insertions that have a font
change (e.g. size) inside them get corrupted, but the corruption occurs at
different places from the font change.

I believe that having a single font throughout in the inserted text works in
both templates (but that may not be true in all circumstances, just in the
ones I've tested).

The Normal.dot template and the letterhead.dot have different sets of styles.

If I can rig up a simple test with two templates, can I email them to
someone to debug?

K

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The key may be in the styles. If the AutoText entry contains paragraphs in
two different styles, one of which is not present (or is differently
defined) in the letterhead template, that might be the problem.

 

[KennyT]

Well, I've tried doing an insert into a letterhead.dot using a 'vanilla'
normal.dot and I can't make it go wrong (which tells me it's something to do
with my wife's normal.dot). The only obvious thing different was the number
of autotext entries. So I trimmed that down to one...

....and it still went wrong.

So,

does anyone want to offer a good temporary home to a normal.dot and a
letterhead.dot???

K

 

[KennyT]

OK, I think I've isolated the issue but I'm not sure how to explain it...

What I think is happening is that the autotext has some embedded style
changes. So, for example (in sort of html terms):

Name
<normal>Address Line 1
Address Line 2 </normal>
Address Line 3

Now, imagine that the <normal> style in the .dot doesn't match the style at
the insertion point in the .doc. For example, at the insertion point, the
fontsize might be 12pt, but the default <normal> style uses 14pt.

So, with the autotext above, "Name" appears as 12pt but the first two
address lines appear as 14pt before reverting to 12pt for the last line...

Does that make sense?

If I'm right, is there any way of stripping the style changes out of
autotext/autocorrect entries? My wife would rather not have to retype all
100 or so entries that she's got, if at all possible!

K

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

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

 

[KennyT]

I realise that (now!). But is there a solution? Are the autotext entries
editable?

K

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

AutoText is not editable. You have to recreate the entry and resave under
the existing name.

 

[KennyT]

OK, is there any way of disabling 'styles' while she retypes them all!

K

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

No. The only solution is to create the entire entry in the desired style.
Using line breaks rather than paragraph breaks will keep the entire entry in
a single paragraph if that is the intent.