Typing =rand(12,5) in Word 2007 inserts a bunch of text. Why?

[Leslie Milton]

In an article on tortoiseshell.net, showing how to create a custom footer in
Word 2007 and save it as a Building Block, the author says to type:
=rand(12,5)
to insert a few paragraphs of text. Sure enough, it did.
The text appears to be from a Word Help file.
I've searched high and low for use of the equal sign followed by a function
and argument, to no avail. It's not a field code, for it lacks the curly
braces.
I tried other arguments -- the second seems to specify the number of lines
returned. I'm inclined to try other functions but might just luck out and
find the one that erases all the docx files.
What is this feature?

 

[macropod]

Hi Leslie,

This is a standard Word feature, and has been for many years.

In versions before 2007, =rand(p,s) produced p paragraphs containing s sentences of "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog".
You can still get that in Word 2007, with rand.old(p,s) - but the spaces between sentences are missing from the 2nd & subsequent
paragraphs, and even the 1st paragraph has only single spaces compared to the double spaces in earlier versions.

As you've found, =rand(p,s) in Word 2007 reproduces text from the help file. Word 2007 also introduced =lorem(p,s), for the editors'
'lorem ipsum dolor ...' text.

With each of these features, omitting the number of paragraphs and sentences from the expression generates a pre-set amount of text.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/DummyText.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org