Geek-Out Your Office

Are you like me? Do you want to appear to be intelligent and eloquent in your written communications without having to put any real effort into it? Have you spent so much time in chat rooms and discussion boards you don’t know how to properly key in such phrases as “as far as I know” and “in my honest opinion” anymore? Well, if that’s the case, maybe this article can help you out. I’m going to show you how to customize Microsoft Office to make typing much easier so that you appear to be writing in a very formal manner  when, in actuality, you’re taking dozens of shortcuts that make your life easier and take a load off your fingers and your mind.

To really geek-out Office in this regard, you need to access the Auto-Correct Options. I usually do this through Outlook, Office’s email management application. You can find this under the Tools menu. Select Options, and from the Options menu click on the Spelling tab, click on the Spelling and AutoCorrection button, and then click on the AutoCorrect Options button. Convoluted? Yes, but now you’re where all the fun starts.

The AutoCorrect menu controls how certain misspellings are handled by all Microsoft Office applications. For instance, if you have a habit of spelling “misspelling” with only one “s,”  AutoCorrect has a rule built into it that’ll will fix your typos on the fly so quickly that you’re likely not even going to notice it’s happening. The best thing about AutoCorrect, however, is the fact that you can customize it to suit your own needs.

For example, I personally have a lazy habit of spelling “details” with the shorthand “dtls.” To compensate for this, I typed “dtls” into the Replace field, “details” into the With field, and clicked on Add, automatically creating a new spelling rule that applies across the board to all Office applications. Now I can use my 4-letter abbreviation and type “details” in about half the time now.

But it doesn’t have to be that simple. You can get all sorts of long phrases spelling out with just a few letters. For example, if I want to use the phrase “as quickly as possible,” I only need to type “aqap.” Since it’s not a real word, there’s not much chance I’ll accidentally put it somewhere it’s not needed.

If you put a little planning into it, before you know it you’ll be typing phrases like “before you know it”  with a simple short-hand like “b4uki.”