Following up on Graham's advice, here is a resource:


Automated Boilerplate Using Microsoft Word

See also:

• How to Add Pop-Up Lists to Any Word Document So You Can Click Your Way Through Changes in Seconds (or how to use the AutoTextList field)
• Building Blocks & Autotext by Greg Maxey

The autocomplete triggers have to be longer than two characters (four required), and I do tend to use #1, #2, etc. for listing options in text, although they are seldom followed by the Enter key. I would not recommend them for the item names/triggers.
I would suggest, instead something like Ctr01, Ctr02 for contract clauses and Wil01, Wil02 for will clauses. Note the capital letters. Insertion of AutoText is case-sensitive. If you have automatic capitalization of the first word in a sentence turned on that feature will defeat use of lower case triggers that start a new sentence or paragraph.

In Word 2010 to have autocomplete tooltips (prompts) show, these have to be stored in the normal template or the document's template. A drawback is that the normal template cannot be a shared template. Autotext can also be stored in other templates including the building blocks template but the Autocomplete prompts will not show up. (This is worse than Word 2003 and 2013 but better than Word 2007.) If you know the name (trigger) for a paragraph, you can type it and press the F3 key to insert the language.

The trigger #1 will NOT give you an autocomplete tip; #0001 will give an autocomplete tip. Either can be used with the F3 key to insert paragraphs.

You can use the Organizer to copy AutoText entries from one template to another. The article by Greg Maxey includes a tool that you can use to backup and restore AutoText. This could also be used to distribute AutoText to other users' normal templates.

If you can put your entries in a Global Template that makes them easy to distribute, but you lose the Autocomplete. If you have a lot of these, I would recommend using the separate global template along with a guide or list for your users.

Attached Images

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Thanks guys,

Is there a way I can share my 'normal' template with the rest of our employees once I have it set up properly?