Inserting Stored, Reusable Information in OpenOffice Writer: One of the Most Useful Features in OpenOffice.org

I think pretty much everyone likes to save time, and avoid painful carpal tunnel surgery. Here are the two very nice shortcut features that let you slap in a bunch of text with just a couple keystrokes.

• AutoFormat lets you create a shortcut for a piece of text like your name, your company's motto, or anything else such as special characters
• Autotext lets you put in huge amounts of text and graphics, with the formatting

Using  the Automatic Formatting to Create Handy Shortcuts

Let’s say you type the word supercalfragilisticexpealidocious a zillion times a day, or your name and title. As much as you might like to type, it's repetitive work.

Or let's say that you need to use any of the special characters like accents or Greek letters. You can insert them the long way if you want.  Choose Insert > Special Characters, scroll through, switch fonts as necessary, select what you want, and click OK. But that takes a long time.

Whatever you want to type, you can set up a shortcut for it.

To do this:

First, get the text you want to reuse ready. Like get your special character inserted in the document, or think about exactly what motto or title or name it is that you want to get into your document more quickly.

Now choose Tools > AutoCorrect and click on the Replace tab.

1. In the left-hand Replace field type your shortcut like sig and in the right-hand field.

2. In the right-hand With field, type your name or motto or paste in the special character that you've already inserted in your document.

3. Click New.

4. Click the Options tab and be sure that both checkboxes for the top item, Use Replacement Table, are marked. That just means "use the stuff in the Replace tab."

5. Click OK.

6.  In your document, type the shortcut, followed by a space, and your words or special character will appear.

AutoText: Storing and Quickly Inserting Text and Graphics

Let's say you've got a signature that looks like this.

It would be nice to just insert all that instead of typing, or even copying and pasting.

1. Go to a document where you've got that text and the logo. Select it all, including the logo, and including the paragraph above and below. MAKE SURE THAT THE LITTLE ANCHOR GRAPHIC IS NOT SHOWING FOR THE GRAPHIC—I.E. DON'T CLICK ON IT.

GOOD

BAD

2. Choose Edit > Autotext.

3. In the Autotext window, select a category, then type the name and the shortcut for it. Remember this shortcut; you can use it later to quickly insert the autotext.

4. Click and hold down on the Autotext button and choose New.

5. Expand the selected category and click on the titleof the autotext. Click the Preview checkbox below the blank area at the right. The autotext will be displayed.

6. Click Close.

 

Now you're ready to insert the Autotext. Here's how.

Long way: Click in any document. Choose Edit > Autotext, select the category and the autotext to insert, and click Insert.

The autotext will appear in the document.

Short way requiring that you remember the shortcut for the item: Type the shortcut that you entered earlier when you set up the autotext item, then press F3.

Note: To determine where your autotexts are stored, choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Paths and look at the Autotext item in the big list. Or in the AutoText window, click Paths. You can add or delete paths there.

That's all there is to it! Once you get everything set up, you might never type again. ;>

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Comments

[Andy Prough]

Brilliant as usual Solveig. Should save a lot of time when putting letterhead graphics into a variety of different types of documents.

[Nick Sharp]

So what terrible thing happens if you DO select the anchor?

[Solveig]

When you select the anchor, you only get the graphic and not the text along with it. So not dire, but not desired.

[Peter]

The Autocorrect option doesn't work for me (using OOo 3.1).
Tried using the method in the help but doesn't work either.
Typing 'sig'+ space just results in 'sig'
Tried 'eee' to be replaced with 'e acute' but didn't work either.
What does work however are the default entries in the replacement table!
Has my version of OOo have a bug? (Build 9399)

[metin2 yang]

Tried using the method in the help but doesn't work either.