In my last blog, I talked about Active Word’s ability to fix all of the typing errors you make, without you having to do anything but enter the information into AW one time (about a 20 second process.) When you enter these corrections into AW, it allows you to choose whether the corrections will be done automatically (“acess” becomes “access” without you doing anything) or letting you hit a “hot key” when you want the correction to be done. Knowing whether you want the correction to be done automatically or manually is about 70% of mastering AW. There are very different reasons to set something one way vs the other.
When you accidentally misspell something, you want AW to correct it without you having to worry about it, right? But with manual correcting, you have to hit the “hot key” before AW does anything. Example from my own files: I put “blog” into AW to expand out to http://members.families.com/havalyon/blog. When I type “blog,” nothing happens. If I type “blog” and hit the hot key however (I chose F11 to be mine, although you can chose almost any F key you want) the word “blog” disappears and http://members.families.com/havalyon/blog appears in its place. This is a direct link to my blogs here at Families. I use this constantly. When I’m at a forum and I want to link to my blogs, I don’t have to remember the address (heaven forbid) or type the long address (even worse,) nor do I have to open my blog up in another window and bring up my blog so I can copy and paste the address (kill me off now.) Nope, I just have to type “blog,” hit F11, and the address appears. The possibilities for this are literally endless.
I have found AW to be a huge help here at Families. I write all of my blogs in Open Office and then copy and paste the blogs into the blog editor at the Families.com website. I used to have to go through and enter all of the web links and formatting at that point, and I spent a lot of time doing this, time that I could have spent doing something else more fun, like eating raw cookie dough and gaining twenty pounds in one sitting. With AW, I have found that I can put the formatting in as I write the blog. I have programmed AW to replace “str” with the formatting codes Families needs to make something bold. I have programmed AW to replace “web” with the HTML codes to place a link within an article. I format as I go along. By time I am done writing a blog, I can copy, paste, and hit okay. I don’t have to worry about adding or doing anything–it’s done! I cannot even tell you how much time and effort this has saved me.
The reason AW has both manual and automatic corrections is because otherwise, you might end up getting some crazy stuff you don’t want. If you are simply wanting to talk about a blog, but you have set up “blog” to automatically be replaced with “http://members.families.com/havalyon/blog” then you’ll never be able to type the word “blog” without getting the whole address. Having a hot key allows you to have control over when the correction is made, and when it isn’t. When you mistype something, then you want the correction to be done automatically–otherwise it would be just as easy to fix your mistake yourself than hit the hot key. So there is a time and a place for both kinds, and both kinds are going to make your job and your life, so much easier.
There is one last function that I use all the time with AW: Bringing up websites and opening up documents. I’ll be covering this amazing function in my next blog!