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Increasing the Capacity of AutoCorrect

Summary: AutoCorrect can be a great tool to, well, "correct" information that you type. If you get a little creative, you can even use it to insert large blocks of text in the place of small mnemonics you type. However, AutoCorrect has limits on the length of the replacement text. This tip discusses those limits and at least one way you can work around them. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, and Excel 2007.)

Ken regularly uses AutoCorrect to replace short mnemonics with longer text blocks (sometimes much longer). When adding an AutoCorrect entry, Ken noted that the With box appears to have a limit of approximately 1,400 characters. There have been a few rare instances when Ken wanted to have AutoCorrect replace with more characters than this limit, and he wondered if there was a way to increase the capacity of the "With" side of an AutoCorrect entry.

The short answer is that no, there isn't a way. The longer answer indicates there must be some misunderstanding on Ken's part, as the longest text string we could place in the text box was 254 characters; Excel just won't accept more than that in the With box.

Whether the limit is 254 or 1,400 characters, the workaround is the same, however: Break the AutoCorrect entry up into two (or more) smaller entries. If you would have put the larger entry under, let's say, the mnemonic BP27 (for "boilerplate 27"), you could put the divided entries under the names BP27a and BP27b. You could then type the desired mnemonics, in order, and get them automatically corrected to the enlarged text blocks.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (3139) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

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