Word 2010 AutoText & AutoComplete

Question

Hi

I am in the process of migrating to Office 2010 from 2003 and have a question about AutoText.  We would like to keep our autotext out of the Normal.dotm and redirect it to a specific user template.  I have read about the ability to save autotext into another building block template and have tried this but I am not getting the autocomplete option.

I have found the article at the end of this post together with a couple of other posts which suggest that as long as the entry is not saved into Building Block.dotx the autocomplete should still work.  Despite trying everything I can't get it to prompt unless it is in AutoText Gallery and the Normal.dotx template.

Can anybody suggest how I can get this to work?

Thanks

Jon

"Microsoft originally indicated that, for AutoComplete to work, the AutoText / Quick Parts entry must be saved to your normal.dotm (the macro-enabled NORMAL template for Word 2010 / Word 2007) and it must be in the AutoText gallery in the Building Blocks Organizer (check the Insert tab, Text group, Quick Parts, Building Blocks Organizer).[3]  However, they have updated that information since I first published this post in February and now say that as long as an entry is saved in a template other than BuildingBlocks.dotx — regardless of which gallery it’s in — typing the abbreviation should trigger the AutoComplete prompt." quote from http://compusavvy.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/autocomplete-returns-in-word-2010-quick-primer-on-quick-parts/

Answer 1

As far as I know, the information in the cited article is incorrect. AutoComplete works with Building Blocks in the Normal template, and it works with Building Blocks in the template attached to the document you’re editing.

 

In other words, if your document template is another template than Normal.dotm, you will get AutoComplete suggestions for Building Blocks in the document template and Normal.dotm.

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Stefan Blom, Microsoft Word MVP

Answer 2

That is a shame because I would like to separate the autotext entries into another user template so we can maintain a standard Normal.dotm. 

Answer 3

If everyone has access to that template and creates documents based on that template, AutoComplete suggestions would work of course.

 

Using (say) a login script to copy the template to all users’ computers would be one possibility.

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Stefan Blom, Microsoft Word MVP