Word doing wacky auto-complete

[reallynotaluddite]

Maybe it's with me. Maybe a faulty setting, As I type in Word(TM) ,
correctly spelled words trigger a little autocomplete box with some
ill-fitting suggetion...even if the word I type is spelled correctly.
Sometimes it offers a word from the current document. Other times it
offfers a word or name from, of all places, my address book. Unless I
hit a space and not a return at the end of the word, the new (and
inappropraite) word will replace the right one. "Mark" changes to
"marketing." Light "bulb" changes to light "Bulbulian."

Is there anything to make this foolishness stop? (Or as Word would
sggest, anything to make this foolishness Stoppowitz?

I thank anyone smarter than I am in advance and extend gushing
appreciation. As Voltaire might say, "Je deteste Microsoft. Par
consequent, je suis."

 

[Elliott Roper]

Maybe it's with me. Maybe a faulty setting, As I type in Word(TM) ,
correctly spelled words trigger a little autocomplete box with some
ill-fitting suggetion...even if the word I type is spelled correctly.
Sometimes it offers a word from the current document. Other times it
offfers a word or name from, of all places, my address book. Unless I
hit a space and not a return at the end of the word, the new (and
inappropraite) word will replace the right one. "Mark" changes to
"marketing." Light "bulb" changes to light "Bulbulian."

Is there anything to make this foolishness stop? (Or as Word would
sggest, anything to make this foolishness Stoppowitz?

I thank anyone smarter than I am in advance and extend gushing
appreciation. As Voltaire might say, "Je deteste Microsoft. Par
consequent, je suis."

wasn't that Descartes?
Meanwhile, back at Voltaire:-
All's for the best, in this best of all possible Words.

Are you using Entourage for mail? If so, google this group for a
remedy. I don't know it first hand, because I would not use Entourage
in a fit, but I remember something similar being discussed. Try
"entourage autocomplete" as the search words in Google Groups advanced
search.

Heh! I just looked. To achieve Stoppowitz, read Paul Berkowitz

 

[reallynotaluddite]

To All...
First....novice at this news-groupery as I am, I appreciate advice on
the appropriate protcol, courtesies, and other niceties. As a kind of
Blanche Dubois of technology, I continue to "rely on the kindness of
strangers." I will, per the first note, be less anonymous in the
future and change my name and email to reflect a real life, desperate,
often confused person who is grateful for help in any stripe.

First order of business, it is indeed Descartes who said "I
think.Therfore I am," and sadly I shoudl have known that. But your
gentle correction will prevent me from making the mistake again
(strangely, I made it earlier in the week, when I wrote a piece that
speculated on a melding of the philosophies of Descartes and Popeye,
which I believe, would have given us a statement, to wit, "I think.
Therefore I am, what I yam."

But enough epistomology and back to the more important guiding
philosophy of my life, which is built on my distain for Microsoft, a
company that has conspired against my sanity with its non-intuitive
interface and the impossibilty of finding a direct answer.

I used Entourage for only a moment, until it reminded me how much I
disliked Outlook. Further, Microsft makes transfer of Outlook data to
Apple as minefield-laden as it can. I ended up using the Apple trio of
iCal, Address Book, and the Apple mail. Aside form mail handling
attachments in a quirky manner (putting them right in the text areas),
I am happier these days.

You folks did help me with the autocorrect anomaly, and for that I am
gushing in my gratitude. I turned off all the autocorrect features and
the problem has disappeared. I can live with manual spell check, and in
fact, I will not be a victim of autocorrect replacing my badly spelled
intended word with something totally inappropriate.

I thank you..... and in the spirit of full disclosure, as suggested in
the first email, I close with my actual name and my appreciation.

Chuck Goldstone
Author. THIS BOOK IS NOT A TOY!: FRIENDLY ADVICE ON
HOW TO AVOID DEATH AND OTHER INCONVENIENCES
(St. Martin's Press. New York. 2005)
www.chuckgoldstone.com

 

[Elliott Roper]

To All...
First....novice at this news-groupery as I am, I appreciate advice on
the appropriate protcol, courtesies, and other niceties. As a kind of
Blanche Dubois of technology, I continue to "rely on the kindness of
strangers." I will, per the first note, be less anonymous in the
future and change my name and email to reflect a real life, desperate,
often confused person who is grateful for help in any stripe.

Welcome. I think you are going to feel at home in here Chuck.

"I think. Therefore I am, what I yam." groan! Maybe not.

But enough epistomology and back to the more important guiding
philosophy of my life, which is built on my distain for Microsoft, a
company that has conspired against my sanity with its non-intuitive
interface and the impossibilty of finding a direct answer.

I used Entourage for only a moment, until it reminded me how much I
disliked Outlook. Further, Microsft makes transfer of Outlook data to
Apple as minefield-laden as it can. I ended up using the Apple trio of
iCal, Address Book, and the Apple mail. Aside form mail handling
attachments in a quirky manner (putting them right in the text areas),
I am happier these days.

Yep, that's what I use too. There are a lot of happy Entourage users in
here though. It is a pity about the attachments, only because others
won't see it as nicely as we do. You get the attachments out easily
enough with the save button just under the addresses in the message
pane. It is the best of both worlds.

You folks did help me with the autocorrect anomaly, and for that I am
gushing in my gratitude. I turned off all the autocorrect features and
the problem has disappeared. I can live with manual spell check, and in
fact, I will not be a victim of autocorrect replacing my badly spelled
intended word with something totally inappropriate.

You might find it interesting to investigate whether all those weird
corrections could have been blamed on Entourage or not. It will be a
bit difficult to help you remotely, beacuse only you have any idea what
found its way into it, and how.

A properly disciplined autocorrect is actually quite useful. You can
massage the autocorrect list in tools » autocorrect » autocorrect.
Getting a proper 1/2 character by typing (1/2) useful. I like auto
smart quotes and get it to correct two initial characters. When I do
want a prime character instead of a single right quote, I get it to
autocorrect (p) to SYMBOL 0x2032 \u

Finally, some of your replacements may be coming from a whimsical
dictionary you have somehow added. Check your spellling and grammar
preferences, then dictionaries, and edit any of your custom
dictionaries for Stoppowitz. By turning off automatic spelling
correction, you have already avoided the worst effects of a bad
dictionary. Word 2004 has made custom dictionaries a lot more
accessible than they once were. Type "Custom Dictionary" into help's
search for how.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Chuck:

First order of business, it is indeed Descartes who said "I
think.Therfore I am," and sadly I shoudl have known that. But your
gentle correction will prevent me from making the mistake again
(strangely, I made it earlier in the week, when I wrote a piece that
speculated on a melding of the philosophies of Descartes and Popeye,
which I believe, would have given us a statement, to wit, "I think.
Therefore I am, what I yam."

{Groan...} Now we've lost Roper and Huggan for at least a week in this
thread Au contraire: your reputation is in no danger from ME, just
another Antipodean Illiterate here

But enough epistomology and back to the more important guiding
philosophy of my life, which is built on my distain for Microsoft, a
company that has conspired against my sanity with its non-intuitive
interface and the impossibilty of finding a direct answer.

Yeah. Well, Microsoft has agreed with you for some years. They have
chucked the user interface out completely in the next incarnation. Like
many other things, it's an acquired taste. It's much more consistent,
logical, and intuitive. But I get the overwhelming feeling that they've
dumbed it down. Far better for users doing simple documents: a bit of a
challenge for those of us who take on long complex volumes.

Finding a direct answer is a problem. The only suggestions I would make are
to "Search" in the Help. Ignore the Index, it means little, and the Table
of Contents works very poorly. Use the search. And for greatest precision,
give it a complete sentence to work with. It's a natural-language
fuzzy-logic engine: if you give it a verb along with some nouns you will get
a much better result.

I used Entourage for only a moment, until it reminded me how much I
disliked Outlook. Further, Microsft makes transfer of Outlook data to
Apple as minefield-laden as it can. I ended up using the Apple trio of
iCal, Address Book, and the Apple mail. Aside form mail handling
attachments in a quirky manner (putting them right in the text areas),
I am happier these days.

Hating Outlook is officially OK. Everyone does

The people who made it impossible to transfer Outlook data back and forth to
Entourage were not the WHOLE of Microsoft. Just the product marketing arm,
who quickly realised that Entourage was a far better PIM for small and
medium business users than Outlook, and didn't want to lose sales Sorry
about that: but one of those professors I mentioned earlier who hangs around
in here soon figured out how to do it. Buy his scripts and you won't have
much trouble

You folks did help me with the autocorrect anomaly, and for that I am
gushing in my gratitude. I turned off all the autocorrect features and
the problem has disappeared. I can live with manual spell check,

You don't need to throttle it back that far. I leave Autocorrect running as
well as Auto Spelling. But I prune the Autocorrect list. Once you get it
tamed, it really is one of the most powerful tools in the kit.

I will not be a victim of autocorrect replacing my badly spelled
intended word with something totally inappropriate.

Oh, come on now, where's your sense of adventure

Hang around, please. Hopefully we can add a bit more happiness to your
daily grind, and you will certainly improve ours.

Cheers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410