Microsoft Word is one of the most powerful desktop publishing tools available on the planet and is incredibly feature rich yet because of its complexity, many features are often unused by Microsoft Word operators. One of the features that I do see under utilised is the AutoText function. The basic overview of AutoText is this, it allows you to recreate or insert common paragraphs into your documents by associating the paragraph to a key word. When you need to insert the paragraph into a document, you simply type in the keyword and then press the Enter key and it inserts the paragraph for you.

So why would this be important?

Well it is quite simple it is going to save you time! If you work in the Financial Planning Industry, Legal Fraternity, the Banking Industry or any industry where you are required to enter key paragraphs into your documents on a regular basis that dont change regularly then this tool will save you time and money.

For example, in Australia, Financial Planners are required to include in their letters of recommendation for investments certain disclaimers. These disclaimers are pretty much stock standard and really dont change all that often. To overcome having to constantly rewrite these disclaimers, you could simply type them out once, then add them to the AutoText Store so that in the future, to add a disclaimer you simply type the name of the disclaimer and hit enter and it would be inserted into your letter. Using this method will ensure one of two advantages.

The first advantage of using this method is that you will ensure the disclaimers used are consistent with all the other letters you have written. The second advantage is that you can cut down on all that laborious typing.

The really cool part about the AutoText Function is that when you create your AutoText entries you dont just insert the paragraph of text. You also include all the formatting that has been applied to the paragraph as well. So, if you have parts of the paragraph in italics or in a different color, then this formatting will be applied.

The AutoText function is a tool that will save you lots of time and money. It should be one of the tools that you are using regularly and incorporate into your templates.