Is there automatic complete option in Word?

[Konrad Den Ende]

I have used StarOffice until just now and even if i like
MS Word i don't seem to be able to activate a certain
option. I'd like Word to suggest words as i type.

Suppose i intend to write "homogenous". How do i make
Word pop-up with a suggestions after i typed, say, "hom"?

I really hope such a function is available. Can't imagine
the alternative, really.

--

Kindly
Konrad
---------------------------------------------------
May all spammers die an agonizing death; have no burial places;
their souls be chased by demons in Gehenna from one room to
another for all eternity and more.

Sleep - thing used by ineffective people
as a substitute for coffee

Ambition - a poor excuse for not having
enough sense to be lazy
---------------------------------------------------

 

[Peri]

I have used StarOffice until just now and even if i like
MS Word i don't seem to be able to activate a certain
option. I'd like Word to suggest words as i type.

Suppose i intend to write "homogenous". How do i make
Word pop-up with a suggestions after i typed, say, "hom"?

Tools | AutoCorrect | AutoText | Show AutoComplete suggestions (enter
AutoText entry)

~ Peri

 

[Konrad Den Ende]

Tools | AutoCorrect | AutoText | Show AutoComplete suggestions (enter
AutoText entry)

THanks for the hint but it wasn't exactly what i was
looking for. It's almost that except for the fact that
i'll have to enter all the words myself. I'd like the
program to find the words in a list of words (one that
i *don't* need to write myself) and suggest them as i
type. I's supposed to be *any* word that is in the
language list.

--

Kindly
Konrad
---------------------------------------------------
May all spammers die an agonizing death; have no burial places;
their souls be chased by demons in Gehenna from one room to
another for all eternity and more.

Sleep - thing used by ineffective people
as a substitute for coffee

Ambition - a poor excuse for not having
enough sense to be lazy
---------------------------------------------------

 

[Graham Mayor]

Word does not employ this type of auto-complete.

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


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

 

[Konrad Den Ende]

Word does not employ this type of auto-complete.

That's havily surprising. It's a very usefull function.
Is there a plug-in or something in that neibourghood
that i can download/purchase and thereby get the
option of auto-complete?

And the other, less important yet intriguigin question.
Why is it so? Every other word processor's got it...

--

Kindly
Konrad
---------------------------------------------------
May all spammers die an agonizing death; have no burial places;
their souls be chased by demons in Gehenna from one room to
another for all eternity and more.

Sleep - thing used by ineffective people
as a substitute for coffee

Ambition - a poor excuse for not having
enough sense to be lazy
---------------------------------------------------

 

[Peri]

That's havily surprising. It's a very usefull function.
Is there a plug-in or something in that neibourghood
that i can download/purchase and thereby get the
option of auto-complete?

And the other, less important yet intriguigin question.
Why is it so? Every other word processor's got it...

Auto-complete for EVERY word?? I think that would be terribly annoying...

~ Peri

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Why in the world would Word jump to the conclusion that you mean
"homogeneous" (much less "homogenous," which is not a word) every time you
typed "hom." You could just as well be intending to type home, hominy,
homily, homunculus, or any number of other words beginning with "hom."

 

[Konrad Den Ende]

Why in the world would Word jump to the conclusion that you mean
"homogeneous" (much less "homogenous," which is not a word) every
time you typed "hom." You could just as well be intending to type
home, hominy, homily, homunculus, or any number of other words
beginning with "hom."

The "homogeneous" was a typo, sorry.

As for the other thing - i was probably unclear. The way
it's supposed to work it will give one a list of choices
and the list will get smaller and more limited as you
emter more and more letters of the word. So, when i type
"hom" i'd like to get a list of *all* words starting with
"hom" (preferably sorted with respect to the frequency
of use). As i keep typing "homogen", the list will shrink
to only contain the words that *are* applicable in the
current case.

There's got to be some plug-in ment for lazy people like
myself that will do just that.

--

Kindly
Konrad
---------------------------------------------------
May all spammers die an agonizing death; have no burial places;
their souls be chased by demons in Gehenna from one room to
another for all eternity and more.

Sleep - thing used by ineffective people
as a substitute for coffee

Ambition - a poor excuse for not having
enough sense to be lazy
---------------------------------------------------

 

[Konrad Den Ende]

Auto-complete for EVERY word?? I think that would
be terribly annoying...

On the contrary. It's increadibly usefull. Windows for
PocketPC has that option and it's hugely effective. On
the other hand, maybe it's a matter of taste. I find that
feature mostly valuable. Give it a try, maybe you'll love
it too! I sure do but as i said - i'm fabulously lazy.

--

Kindly
Konrad
---------------------------------------------------
May all spammers die an agonizing death; have no burial places;
their souls be chased by demons in Gehenna from one room to
another for all eternity and more.

Sleep - thing used by ineffective people
as a substitute for coffee

Ambition - a poor excuse for not having
enough sense to be lazy
---------------------------------------------------

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Well, it does sound like an interesting tool, though I suspect that
inattentive use might result in even more ludicrous results than unthinking
acceptance of the spelling checker's suggestions!

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

It can be a big time saver when using an input-challenged device like a
Pocket PC. But, if you're a fast touch typist, the extra overhead involved
could slow things down on a desktop or notebook computer. Personally, I
don't even like it on the Pocket PC. It takes longer for me to select the
suggested word than it does to simply type it. But, my PDA has a built-in
keyboard, so ymmv.

But, I take issue with Konrad's claim that "Every other word processor's got
it...". Certainly, WordPerfect doesn't have it, nor does any other word
processor I've ever used.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

PS... Open Office does have this feature. For words like homogeneous, it
notes the word the first time you type it, then offers it up as an
autocomplete suggestion the next time you type "hom". It does not appear to
offer a list of possible words, however... just a single word. As you
continue to type and effectively rule a given suggestion out, it will off
another word that still matches what you've typed so far. Since I seldom
look at the screen while typing, it wouldn't be of much use to me.

Excel also has something like this feature, and it can be very handy when
entering recurring text in cells. When I'm working in Excel, I *am* looking
at the screen all the time, so I do find it useful.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

AutoComplete in Excel can be wonderful or maddening depending on
application, but I do often wish for it in Word!

 

[Konrad Den Ende]

It can be a big time saver when using an input-challenged device like
a Pocket PC. But, if you're a fast touch typist, the extra overhead
involved could slow things down on a desktop or notebook computer.

Try a language that puts the words together. Somewhat
nasty example but still:
"instruktionsmanual" (manual)
"kärnkraftsreaktorhärdsmälta" (nuclear plant breakdown)
Try it and you'll learn to *need* such feature, hehe.

But, I take issue with Konrad's claim that "Every other word
processor's got it...". Certainly, WordPerfect doesn't have it, nor
does any other word processor I've ever used.

OpenOffice, as you mention as well as a number of smaller,
more specified tools as JCreator or WinEdt. I simply assumed
that MS would have something like that only better.

I have big trust in the usability of MS products so i simply
choose to hope that such feature will be implemented in the
next version of Office. Could such a feature be programmed
in a form of a script? How har could that be?

--

Kindly
Konrad
---------------------------------------------------
May all spammers die an agonizing death; have no burial places;
their souls be chased by demons in Gehenna from one room to
another for all eternity and more.

Sleep - thing used by ineffective people
as a substitute for coffee

Ambition - a poor excuse for not having
enough sense to be lazy
---------------------------------------------------

 

[Amedee Van Gasse]

Konrad Den Ende shared this with us in microsoft.public.word.newusers:

I have used StarOffice until just now and even if i like
MS Word i don't seem to be able to activate a certain
option. I'd like Word to suggest words as i type.

????? Did you loose your mind?
If you used StarOffice, why did you go back(1) to MS Ofice?
Don't come complaining about self-inflicted vendor lock-in, you have
only yourself to blame...
;-)



(1) back, as in "back to the stone age"

 

[Konrad Den Ende]

????? Did you loose your mind?
If you used StarOffice, why did you go back(1) to
MS Ofice? Don't come complaining about self-inflicted
vendor lock-in, you have only yourself to blame...
(1) back, as in "back to the stone age"

There are certain fields where OpenOffice doesn't
quite cover my needs. I tried writing Japanese and
it worked so-so. I got the job done but it was nicer
to do that in Word.

--

Kindly
Konrad
---------------------------------------------------
May all spammers die an agonizing death; have no burial places;
their souls be chased by demons in Gehenna from one room to
another for all eternity and more.

Sleep - thing used by ineffective people
as a substitute for coffee

Ambition - a poor excuse for not having
enough sense to be lazy
---------------------------------------------------

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

It would be really tedious to program this using VBA.

An alternative, however, which would take some time to accumulate words,
would be to turn the long terms you use into AutoText entries. Once an
AutoText entry exists, it behaves the same way auto-complete does, pretty
much. So, for example, if I create an AutoText entry for "Microsoft Office
Word", and I start typing "micr..." by the time I type the "r", Word
recognizes it and offers to complete it if I press Enter.

You seem to want something for words, rather than phrases. So, one approach
would be to create a macro that selects the most recently typed word and
creates an AutoText entry for it. You could then assign an easy hotkey
(e.g., F11 for F12) to the macro to make it easier to run.

At first, you'd be pressing that key a lot, but as you build up a repertoire
of terms, you'd be using it less and less.

OR... you could take an existing list of words and run a recursive macro on
it to add them all to the AutoText list in one fell swoop.

I've forgotten what the limit is on the number of AutoText entries you can
have.

 

[Konrad Den Ende]

You seem to want something for words, rather than phrases. So, one

approach would be to create a macro that selects the most recently
typed word and creates an AutoText entry for it. You could then
assign an easy hotkey (e.g., F11 for F12) to the macro to make it
easier to run.

OR... you could take an existing list of words and run a recursive
macro on it to add them all to the AutoText list in one fell swoop.

I've forgotten what the limit is on the number of AutoText entries
you can have.

I'll give it a try. Thanks!

--

Kindly
Konrad
---------------------------------------------------
May all spammers die an agonizing death; have no burial places;
their souls be chased by demons in Gehenna from one room to
another for all eternity and more.

Sleep - thing used by ineffective people
as a substitute for coffee

Ambition - a poor excuse for not having
enough sense to be lazy
---------------------------------------------------