Explanation:

You probably take many of these automatic formatting (AutoFormat) adjustments for granted. Word does things like changing your quotes to Smart Quotes, automatically creating bulleted and numbered lists, and changing the indentation of paragraphs.

This is FINE and good for many people, but what if you GET a document from someone else and it needs a lot of the "little touches" applied to it? This is where the real industrial-strength AutoFormat feature of Word comes into play. You see, AutoFormat doesn't just work as you type—it also is available, on demand, to format an entire document. Here's how to AutoFormat your document:

Load the document you want to format.

Choose AutoFormat from the Format menu. Word displays the AutoFormat dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The AutoFormat dialog box.

Use the radio buttons to indicate if you want AutoFormat to work without STOPPING for your input, or not.

Click on OK.

At this point, AutoFormat works its magic and your document is "reformatted" to appear as it would have if you had typed it yourself.

You should understand that it is very unlikely that AutoFormat will do all the formatting you need DONE. Each document is different, and you should make sure you examine the document after AutoFormat is completed to see if there are any other formatting tasks you need to complete.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most POPULAR word processing software in the world.) This tip (638) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later)