How to Use AutoCorrect in Word 2013

Word 2010 For Dummies

Some typos and spelling errors in Word 2013 are never graced by the AutoCorrect red zigzag. That's because Word quickly fixes hundreds of common typos and spelling errors on the fly. The AutoCorrect feature does it, and you have to be quick to see it.

Understand AutoCorrect

There’s nothing to using AutoCorrect; it happens automatically. In Word, try to type the word mispell. You can’t! Word uses AutoCorrect and suddenly you see misspell.

Most commonly misspelled words can be found in AutoCorrect's repertoire: acomodate, suposed, recieve, and so on. Try a few. See whether you can baffle Word!

In addition to fixing spelling errors, AutoCorrect helps you enter special characters. For example, type (C) and AutoCorrect properly inserts the © copyright symbol. Ditto for (TM) for the trademark. Typing --> is translated into an arrow, and even :) becomes a happy face.

Beyond spelling, AutoCorrect fixes certain common punctuation. It automatically capitalizes the first letter of a sentence. AutoCorrect capitalizes I when you forget to, properly capitalizes the names of days, fixes the iNVERSE cAPS lOCK pROBLEM, plus other common typos.

How to undo an AutoCorrect correction

You can reverse AutoCorrect instant changes, but only when you're quick. The secret is to press Ctrl+Z (the Undo command) immediately after AutoCorrect makes its correction. The change is gone.

When AutoCorrect fixes a word, a blue rectangle appears under the first letter. That’s your key to access AutoCorrect options and change the way AutoCorrect behaves: Point the mouse at the rectangle to see a button, which you can then click to see various AutoCorrect options.

Here are your options:

Change Back to “whatever”: Undo the AutoCorrection.
Stop Automatically Correcting “whatever”: Remove the word from the AutoCorrect dictionary so that it’s not corrected automatically again. (But it may still be flagged as incorrect by the spell checker.)
Control AutoCorrect Options: Display the AutoCorrect dialog box, which is used to customize various AutoCorrect settings and to edit or create new entries in the AutoCorrect library.

About This Article

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.