If there are things that you find yourself typing regularly, there is a way of increasing your productivity. By using Word’s AutoText feature you only have to start typing a few letters of your name or postal address before it offers an option to fill the rest of the text for you. Word comes with a number of entries already set up. If you start to type the word ‘Cordially’, you should notice a little box appear like the one pictured below. As it says, just press Enter and Word will insert the rest of the text.

If this does not appear, you probably have AutoComplete switched off. To switch this on, and to see a list of all the existing AutoText entries, pull down the ‘Insert’ menu and from the ‘AutoText’ sub-menu click on ‘AutoText…’, which will open the following dialog box.

Make sure that ‘Show AutoComplete selections’ is ticked. You can also create a new AutoText entry with this dialog by typing the text where indicated and clicking the ‘Add’ button; however, there is an easier way to do it.

Click on ‘OK’ to close the dialog box and in your current word document type your name. Select the text and either pull down the ‘Insert’ menu, then the ‘AutoText’ sub-menu, and click on ‘Add…’ or simply hold down the Alt key and press F3. You will then be asked to give the new AutoText entry a name.

From now on when you start to type your name you will be offered the option to insert it as with ‘Cordially’. The advantage of entering new AutoText this way is that you can insert text that spans several lines like your postal address. All you need to do is type it in select it and press Alt and F3, as before. You can even add pictures to AutoText by selecting them along with some text or on their own and following the above instructions.

In the previous part of this article I looked at using the built in text recovery features in MS Word. But, what can be done if this doesn’t work? One way to try to recover text from a corrupted file is to open it in Notepad.

To open Notepad click on the Start button, go to ‘App Programs’, then ‘Accessories’ and click on its icon. You can then drag and drop the corrupt file into Notepad.

You will then see something that looks like this.

As you can see Notepad is showing some garbage as well as the text of the Word document. The garbage is an attempt by Notepad to display binary (non-textual) information such as images and the like.

Switch on word wrapping, making Notepad remove the scroll bar from the bottom and spread long pieces of text over more than one line. To do this pull down the ‘Format’ menu and click on ‘Word Wrap’ if it is not already ticked. This will make the file easier to search through for the text you wish to recover.

You can now either just browse through the file copying and pasting the text you want into a new Word document, or you can use the ‘Find…’ facility in Notepad to locate the lost text (it is in the ‘Edit’ menu). Searching for frequently used words like ‘the’ or ‘is’ should enable you to quickly find the actual text among all the garbage.

For details on how to quickly select, copy and paste text, see this post.

If Microsoft Word runs into a problem with a file it usually offers a recover option when you open the program the next time. But sometimes this option is not given to you, and you have to try to recover text from a corrupted file manually.

To do this pull down the ‘File’ menu in Word and select ‘Open…’ to see the appropriate dialog box. From the ‘Files of type’ drop-down list select ‘Recover Text from Any File’. Then browse to the file you wish to try to recover text, select it, and click the ‘Open’ button. With any luck Word will extract the text from that file. This process may work with files of types that Word does not support too.

In the second part of the article I will look at what to do if this method fails.

Occasionally we have to make use of subscripts or superscripts in our documents. The most common use of these is with dates, as in 20^th. There the ‘th’ is a superscript; that is, smaller text that is raised. Subscripts are most often used in technical language such as if we refer to water as H₂O. There the subscript is the ‘2′; smaller text that is lowered.

To switch to subscript mode or to change the selected text to a subscript, hold down the Control key and press the = key. This same combination will also set selected subscript text back to normal and switch out of subscript mode, as with the keyboard shortcuts for bold or italic mode.

To switch to superscript mode or to change the selected text to a superscript, hold down the Control key and the Shift key, and then press the = key. As with subscripts the same combination switches back to normal text to if presses again.

This tip applies to Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, but unfortunately not to Excel.

Occasionally we have to make use of subscripts or superscripts in our documents. The most common use of these is with dates, as in 20^th. There the ‘th’ is a superscript; that is, smaller text that is raised. Subscripts are most often used in technical language such as if we refer to water as H₂O. There the subscript is the ‘2′; smaller text that is lowered.

To switch to subscript mode or to change the selected text to a subscript, hold down the Control key and press the = key. This same combination will also set selected subscript text back to normal and switch out of subscript mode, as with the keyboard shortcuts for bold or italic mode.

To switch to superscript mode or to change the selected text to a superscript, hold down the Control key and the Shift key, and then press the = key. As with subscripts the same combination switches back to normal text to if presses again.

This tip applies to Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, but unfortunately not to Excel.

Occasionally we have to make use of subscripts or superscripts in our documents. The most common use of these is with dates, as in 20^th. There the ‘th’ is a superscript; that is, smaller text that is raised. Subscripts are most often used in technical language such as if we refer to water as H₂O. There the subscript is the ‘2′; smaller text that is lowered.

To switch to subscript mode or to change the selected text to a subscript, hold down the Control key and press the = key. This same combination will also set selected subscript text back to normal and switch out of subscript mode, as with the keyboard shortcuts for bold or italic mode.

To switch to superscript mode or to change the selected text to a superscript, hold down the Control key and the Shift key, and then press the = key. As with subscripts the same combination switches back to normal text to if presses again.

This tip applies to Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, but unfortunately not to Excel.