How to avoid common spelling mistakes using Outlook AutoText

At times, we are so busy responding to emails that checking the spelling and grammar is really not an option… Outlook spell checker does a great job of identifying spelling mistakes… but what about correct spelling but incorrect words?

Let me tell you a recent story to explain this further:

Recently I noticed that one of our Sales Rep sent an email with the phrase:

“Our sincere apologize for any inconvenience caused”

All the words were spelled correctly so spell check did not identify any mistakes… but the word “apologize” was incorrectly used. The correct word was “apologies”.

This is one of the common phrases used by the sales team so to ensure that the same mistake was not repeated, we used Outlook’s AutoText to insert the correct phrase as they type the email.

What is AutoText?

The easiest way to illustrate this is with an example. We setup an entry in Outlook for “Our sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused”. Now as the user starts typing the phrase, Outlook will automatically prompt if you want to insert the saved phrase…

All you have to do is press Enter if you want the phrase entered. Otherwise you can just keep typing whatever you want and the prompt disappears.

Setting up your own entries is super easy.

• Type the phrase that you want (in an email).
• Select the text using your mouse.
• Click Insert on the ribbon.
• Click Quick Parts > AutoText.
• Click Save Selection to AutoText Gallery to display the following screen.

• I used the default options for AutoText but you may want to change the Name or Category.
• Click OK.

The next time you start typing the phrase, Outlook will offer to complete it for you.

Try it out, it’s a great way to save you time correcting spelling errors while you focus on your real work.

If you know of other ways to ensure that your emails are spelling-error-free, share it with us by leaving a comment on this blog.