Re: Word doing wacky auto-complete

In article <1152416436.016568.83370@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
reallynotaluddite <uselessdrivel@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

To All...
First....novice at this news-groupery as I am, I appreciate advice on
the appropriate protcol, courtesies, and other niceties. As a kind of
Blanche Dubois of technology, I continue to "rely on the kindness of
strangers." I will, per the first note, be less anonymous in the
future and change my name and email to reflect a real life, desperate,
often confused person who is grateful for help in any stripe.

Welcome. I think you are going to feel at home in here Chuck.
<snip>
"I think. Therefore I am, what I yam."
groan! Maybe not.

But enough epistomology and back to the more important guiding
philosophy of my life, which is built on my distain for Microsoft, a
company that has conspired against my sanity with its non-intuitive
interface and the impossibilty of finding a direct answer.

I used Entourage for only a moment, until it reminded me how much I
disliked Outlook. Further, Microsft makes transfer of Outlook data to
Apple as minefield-laden as it can. I ended up using the Apple trio of
iCal, Address Book, and the Apple mail. Aside form mail handling
attachments in a quirky manner (putting them right in the text areas),
I am happier these days.
Yep, that's what I use too. There are a lot of happy Entourage users in
here though. It is a pity about the attachments, only because others
won't see it as nicely as we do. You get the attachments out easily
enough with the save button just under the addresses in the message
pane. It is the best of both worlds.

You folks did help me with the autocorrect anomaly, and for that I am
gushing in my gratitude. I turned off all the autocorrect features and
the problem has disappeared. I can live with manual spell check, and in
fact, I will not be a victim of autocorrect replacing my badly spelled
intended word with something totally inappropriate.

You might find it interesting to investigate whether all those weird
corrections could have been blamed on Entourage or not. It will be a
bit difficult to help you remotely, beacuse only you have any idea what
found its way into it, and how.

A properly disciplined autocorrect is actually quite useful. You can
massage the autocorrect list in tools » autocorrect » autocorrect.
Getting a proper 1/2 character by typing (1/2) useful. I like auto
smart quotes and get it to correct two initial characters. When I do
want a prime character instead of a single right quote, I get it to
autocorrect (p) to SYMBOL 0x2032 \u

Finally, some of your replacements may be coming from a whimsical
dictionary you have somehow added. Check your spellling and grammar
preferences, then dictionaries, and edit any of your custom
dictionaries for Stoppowitz. By turning off automatic spelling
correction, you have already avoided the worst effects of a bad
dictionary. Word 2004 has made custom dictionaries a lot more
accessible than they once were. Type "Custom Dictionary" into help's
search for how.
.