MS Word – Keyboard Shortcut for AutoCorrect Options Menu

autocorrectkeyboard shortcutsmicrosoft word

I'm looking for the keyboard shortcut to open the AutoCorrect Options menu (I'm using that name since it's what the tooltip shows) that's added when it makes corrections.

When MS Word (I'm using version 2013) makes a change with the AutoCorrect feature, it adds a small underscore icon (is there an official name for it?) when I move the cursor near the corrected word.

For example if I start a sentence without a capital letter (i.e. I type "simply").

Word will automatically correct that to "Simply" and when I move back to the place that was corrected a small line will show below the "Si" part.

With the mouse I can hover it and show a button

that when clicked will show a menu with actions I can take on that correction.

What I'm looking for is a way to open this menu without having to use the mouse. The next best thing would be to revert that change other than CONTROL+Z since that will undo typing "do something with it" before undo'ing the auto-capitalization.

Best Answer

These context-dependent icons with menu were originally introduced as Smart Tags, they were programmable and they came with keyboard shortcut Alt+Shift+F10 for opening their menu.

Although the technology was deprecated, the core look and keyboard shortcut remained the same, although official keyboard shortcuts list now quotes it as:

Display a menu or message for an available action. ALT+SHIFT+F10

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Microsoft Word already has a very good built-in feature for this called AutoCorrect. If you don't have it on already then enable it. Make sure in the options menu that most of the boxes are ticked including the "Automatically use suggestions from the spell checker".

This particular sub feature sounds very useful to you as it should pick the closest word from the dictionary and replace it while you are typing. Word is fairly good at picking the correct word even when the input it mangled. Also this behavior won't be too much of a risk since you state you double check your transcript carefully :)

EDIT: Since Microsoft Word's auto correct feature only corrects words it's already familiar with, you could build on this functionality and go one step further so every incorrect word is replaced with the first suggestion from the dictionary. Since Microsoft Word is pretty good at picking the correct words when they are slightly misspelled you should have a good success rate with this.

You can include this macro in your document and have it run at start up every X number of seconds. It will replace any misspelled words with the first suggestion from the dictionary.

Sub AutoSpellCheck()
    Dim oSE As Range
    Dim oSC
    For Each oSE In ActiveDocument.Range.SpellingErrors
        Set oSC = oSE.GetSpellingSuggestions
        If oSC.Count > 0 Then
        oSE.Text = oSC(1)
        End If
    Next oSE
End Sub

Best Answer

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