Microsoft Word

Do you know why so many jargon words are abbreviated in scientific articles? Sometimes the list becomes so long and remembering them so difficult that you wish they were not abbreviated at all. One reason is that the authors try to decrease the number words they use and come up with some unrealistic abbreviations. The other reason is that the authors don’t use their AutoCorrect option and do not want to type and retype the same thing over and over again. You can have your frequent abbreviations in your AutoCorrect list or type the abbreviation and let it convert to the full jargon as you continue typing.

Isn’t it nice that when you type abeta or asyn in MS Word, they are converted automatically to Aβ and α-synuclein (even in your Entourage) so you don’t have to click on your Character Palette to insert the special characters each time you type them? How many times would you have done that? Well, it goes for other things you frequently type but want them changed in your document (e.g., i.e., in vitro, et al., RNA, DNA, PICUP, SELEX, etc., etc.). Just type eg, ie, rna, dna, and continue typing by pressing the Space Tab and the word is formatted by itself. Well, it is nice if you know how to use the AutoCorrect option in MS Word. That is easy. What was difficult was to transfer those AutoCorrect entries that you have accumulated from one computer to another, from *.acl files to Normal.dot, from one platform to another, from one Word version to another, and most of all from the Big Mac to the humble PC. I sound like a advertising Guru now!

So here you go. You’ll find attached a Macro (I found on the internet) that does the job well with no glitches. I just used it to get my AutoCorrect entries from my work Mac which runs MS Word 2004 and transferred them to my PC which runs MS Word 2007. Using this Macro, you can even edit and format your AutoCorrect entries and re-update your AutoCorrect list by over-writing the previous one.

Enjoy but remember to enable the Macro ; it won’t run otherwise!

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