Mac Forum / Applications / MS Office / March 2006

Ok.

The AutoText menu is pretty easy--the original poster wanted to share it
across an office, and that requires a little bit more messing about--holler
back if that's desired.  These directions will save everything into the
Normal template, and will make the menu accessible from any document on your
user account on your computer (if you want to use it elsewhere, see the
end).

***First, create your AutoTexts.

Basically, type the text, select it, and use Insert | AutoText | New.  In
the dialog, use the name you want on the menu. Remember the names you use,
they will be handy later.
There's a more extensive tutorial on creating AutoTexts here:
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/customization/AutoText.htm
(hit reload a few times in Safari, or use a different browser)

***Second, build your menu.

Where do you want your menu to be?  Options: on a toolbar, on its own
toolbar, in an existing menu, as a new menu.  For now, create it on its own
toolbar, you can move it later (see below).

Go to Tools | Customize | Toolbars and Menus.
In the Toolbars tab, click New. Name the toolbar in the resulting dialog. A
little toolbar with empty space for one icon will appear.

Click on the Commands tab in the Customize dialog.

In the left column, under categories, select New Menu (scroll all the way
down). In the right column, select the New Menu entry and drag it to your
freshly created toolbar.  On your toolbar, right-click or double-click the
new icon to bring up the Properties dialog, and give the menu a better name
than New Menu.

Back to the Commands tab in the Customize dialog.

In the left column, under categories, select AutoText.  Scroll down a ways,
this is not alphabetical.

Now the right column is showing all your AutoText entries.  Sorry, all your
contacts might be in there, cluttering it up.  Click anywhere in the right
column.  Type a letter--e.g., "S"--to jump to the S section of the AutoText
entries.  Find the AutoText you created.  Drag it over to the New Menu icon,
hover over New Menu for a minute, until a dropdown appears, drag the
AutoText onto the dropdown. As you drag around the AutoText, a black bar
will appear, showing you where the command will land when you release the
mouse.

Repeat until all the AutoTexts are added to the menu.  I said remember the
names because you probably will want to use that "type first few letters" to
navigate the AutoText entry listing.  If you want additional submenus,
simply drag on another New Menu command, and build that menu.

The menu will not actually work until you have exited the Tools | Customize
dialog, and are back in a Word doc.  Then you can test it.

There's a general tutorial on building custom menus here:
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08237

****Third, SAVE YOUR WORK

The default is for Word to save such customizations into the Normal
template.  First, hold down Shift and click File--you will see Save has
changed to Save All. Select it. Normal has now saved the changes you just
made to it, and if Word crashes, your menu won't be lost.

However, Normal has a tendency to corrupt. Just saving it is not enough. You
should now back up the Normal template, so that your hard work does not get
lost.

See here for the location of the Normal template and other things to back
up.
http://word.mvps.org/mac/BackUpPrefs.html

Caveat!  If your menu is on its own toolbar, then you can recover your
custom menu from a corrupt Normal by copying the toolbar into another
template or a regenerated Normal.  However, changes to the built-in toolbars
and the built-in menus cannot be recovered from a corrupt Normal, your work
would just be lost.  That's why I said put it on its own toolbar.  Any
custom toolbar that you created from scratch should also be recoverable,
however.  

If you want to move the menu, simply return to Tools | Customize | Toolbars.
Bring up your new toolbar and where you want it to be.  Drag your new menu
into the new location--if you hold down Option while dragging, it will copy
the menu instead of moving it.

See here for how to Recover Customizations From Normal
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/MacWordNormal.html

Another way to protect your work would be to keep all such customizations in
a global template instead of in Normal. More information on global templates
here:
http://word.mvps.org/mac/GlobalTemplate.html

However, if you want to use a global template, you would need to copy BOTH
the toolbar and the AutoText entries into such a template, using the same
technique from the Recover Customizations link. Organizer appears to allow
shift-click and cmd-click for more efficient selecting.

Hope that's useful,
Daiya

Hum, I guess I didn't try hard enough! We've had a bunch of other
projects get in the way, so I haven't been able to dig in and start
setting up the canned text to see which is better: AutoText or the
scrapbook.

Thank you everyone for sharing your suggestions. Once we've figured
this out, I'll post a note.