5.4.6  AutoCorrect Options

 

 

 

AutoCorrect Options can both disturb and ease your inputting, so it's worth some discussion with examples.

 

If your copy of DS-Access has not already unchecked the first two boxes (Correct TWo INitial CApitals; Capitalize first letter of sentences), immediately do so.  You may very well want to type MS as two initial capitals, or indicate flyleaves as folios II.  You will be very irritated if the program decides it's smarter than you, and insists upon "ff. Ii" (a period, looking to the computer just like the end of one sentence, followed by a lower case letter?  tut, tut).

 

Perhaps a safer way around at least one of these problems is to open AutoCorrect Options, click on Exceptions, and in the space “Don’t capitalize after ...” type in "ff." or "fol."  Then click on OK.

 

But AutoCorrect Options is also a simple solution to the problem of repetitive data entry, which takes advantage of, nay, makes a fool of, one of the intrusive "I know better than you" features of Microsoft applications.  Any commonly entered piece of text, such at the name and dates of your library's major donor, or such as your own name (for the Inputter field) can be entered by code as if a mistake and the program will supply the correction.  Just be careful to choose some unlikely but easy-to-type monogram as the mistake; for example, combinations with k or q or z might be handy because you're unlikely to type them in your normal data entry.  A mnemonic 2- or 3-letter string is also good.  Hint:  lower case letters are easier to type than upper.

 

Open AutoCorrect Options; in the resulting box, type your "mistake" in the Replace column (in the above example, "gp"), while in the With column type your "correction":  "George A. Plimpton (1855-1936)."  Click Add, then OK to exit from the AutoCorrect box.  Then, when you're entering data, the correction you've established will take place as soon as you tab or otherwise move out of the field where you've put your intentional mistake.