Dealing with some annoying word features? We have got your back with simple fixes.
It is almost difficult not to use Microsoft word if you send, write, and receive word documents.
However, there are so many annoying automatic features on Microsoft word that people find problematic.
If you have had to deal with any of them and couldn’t find help or easy fixes, this article may be very helpful.
A few things you must keep in mind: First, most of the options that you need on the word processor are positioned in the AutoFormat As You Type tab.
You can find a similar set of options in the AutoFormat tab, but if you choose to have those ones disabled, it won’t do you any good with Word’s spontaneous changes.
Users sometimes are unable to make that distinction and are confused as to why the changes keep happening after they had turned off the necessary settings.
Second, It’s not always the Microsoft word features themselves that are causing the annoyance — it’s just not being able to control them, or knowing how to control them.
| No | Issue | Solution |
| 1 | Word automatically creates a hyperlink whenever you type a Web page address | Go to the Tools option | AutoCorrect Options and click on the AutoFormat As You Type tab. Under the Replace As You Type option, deselect or untick the Internet And Network Paths With Hyperlinks check box and then click OK. |
| 2 | Word changes the capitalization of text while you type | A host of word settings can trigger the above behavior. Go to Tools | AutoCorrect Options then choose the AutoCorrect tab. Here, you can deselect the check boxes that govern the unwanted actions such as: Capitalize First Letter Of Sentences Correct Two Initial Capitals Capitalize Names Of Days Capitalize First Letter Of Table Cells Correct Accidental Use Of Caps Lock Key |
| 3 | Word unexpectedly inserts symbols, such as copyright character or trademark characters or even inserts a whole passage of text | Go to Tools | AutoCorrect Options and choose the AutoCorrect tab. When you are there, find the check box for Replace Text As You Type. You either deselect the option to suppress all replacements or you can select and delete individual items present in the list below it. You can choose to keep the feature enabled and then remove items selectively, because the list includes a boat load of common misspellings that are quite nice to have corrected for you. |
| 4 | Word superscripts all your ordinal numbers, like 1st and 2nd | Visit Tools | AutoCorrect Options and then click on the AutoFormat As You Type tab. Uncheck the Ordinals (1st) With the Superscript check box and then click OK. |
| 5 | Word converts your fractions into formatted versions. | Visit Tools | AutoCorrect Options and then click on the AutoFormat As You Type tab. Uncheck the Fractions (1/2) With the Fraction Character option. |
| 6 | Word automatically turns straight quotes and apostrophe marks into curly characters | Visit Tools | AutoCorrect Options and then click on the AutoFormat As You Type tab. Uncheck the Straight Quotes With Smart Quotes check box and then proceed to click OK. |
| 7 | When you attempt to select a few characters within a word, the highlight ends up jumping to select the whole word | Visit Tools | Options and click on the Edit tab. Look to the right column under the Editing Options, then uncheck the When Selecting, Automatically Select Entire Word box and then click OK. |
| 8 | Once you type three or more hyphens then click Enter, Word will insert a border line | Visit Tools | AutoFormat and then select the AutoFormat As You Type tab. Uncheck the Border Lines check box and then click OK. |
| 9 | Word automatically includes numbers or bullets at the beginning of a sentence or lines as you type them | There are two things that can lead to this potential annoyance. First of all, if you begin to type something that Word thinks is a bulleted list (using asterisks for instance) or type the number 1, a period, followed by some text, it may proceed to convert what you type to numbered or bulleted or list format when you click Enter. To prevent this from happening, go to the Tools | AutoCorrect Options and then select the AutoFormat As You Type tab. Then, unclick the Automatic Bulleted List or unclick the Automatic Numbered list check boxes and then click OK. Another related aspect of this kind of behavior is that once you are entering automatic list items, clicking Enter will cause it. Word is designed to keep inserting numbers or bullets on each new line. If you will like to free yourself from this formatting problem, just click on enter a second time, and Word will stop bothering you. |
| 10 | Whenever you type hyphens, Word will insert an em dash or an en dash | If you type any word, followed by two hyphens, and then another word (with no spaces), Word will automatically change the hyphens to an em dash. Also If you type a space before and after the featured hyphens, it will change them to an en dash. If you would like to disable this feature, Go to Tools | AutoCorrect Options and then choose the AutoFormat As You Type tab. Unclick the Hyphens (–) With Dash (-) check box and then click OK. |
Bonus fixes
Microsoft word may cause users some extra grief in various ways apart from the automatic behaviors. It may go a little something like this:
- Complaint: My document if full of funny pieces of code and all my pictures are gone.
- Culprit: The field code display has been turned on.
- Solution: Simply press Alt+F9 to return the display of field code results
- Complaint: Seeing a random gray brackets around a bunch of your texts
- Culprit: Here, bookmark display has been enabled
- Solution: Visit Tools | Options and then select the View tab. After that, under the Show options, unclick the Bookmarks check box and then click OK.
- Complaint: Everything in front of the cursor is disappearing as I am typing
- Culprit: The Overtype mode has been automatically activated
- Solution: simply click on the INS key on your laptop
