Document Assembly System In Word

I bet you never thought you had a Document Assembly System in Word! Well, in a manner of speaking, you do and it’s called  AutoCorrect!

Say you work in a law office and you are at the very bottom of your document and you need to do a Certificate of Service. I know a lot of folks go to “OK, let me find that last document I used this in and copy the certificate and paste it into this one!” Well, I suppose you could do that but I personally am very lazy and do not want to waste that kind of time and energy, not to mention the fact that I get distracted easily and could forget to change the name of the document date before I print it out and hand it to someone, looking very inefficient.

So, what I prefer to do is create one Certificate of Service and save it in AutoCorrect.

AutoText and AutoCorrect let you avoid having to retype text that you commonly use in your documents. AutoText can handle large chunks of text, including headings and paragraph formatting, and is stored as part of your Word template. Or, for 255 characters max that will be used in all your Office Apps, use AutoCorrect to replace a few characters with your full text.


Follow the steps below to create and use an AutoText entry:

  1. Select in your document the text that you would like to make into a reusable certificate (i.e., cert).
  2. Press Alt+F3.
  3. Fill out the information in the Create New Building Block dialog box. Most of the default values will be fine, but including an intuitive name and description will make your AutoText easier for you to find and use.

When you are ready to use your text, simply click Insert | Quick Parts | AutoText, and select the entry you would like.


Follow the steps below to configure and use an AutoCorrect entry:

  1. In your document, select up to 255 characters that you want to make into a reusable block of text.
  2. Go to File| Options | Proofing and select AutoCorrect Options.
  3. On the AutoCorrect tab, select the Replace text as you type checkbox if it is not already.
  4. Under Replace, type the characters that you want to trigger your automatic text. The text that you selected in your document should appear under With.
  5. Select Add,  OK, and OK again.

When you want to use the text, type the characters you entered in the Replace box. When you press Spacebar or Enter, the characters you typed are replaced with the reusable text.

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