Here’s one super neat trick, a friend of mine shared to me. Since she’s working the more or less clerical post she usually has to draft and format corporate communication in a flash. And one underrated (sometimes even berated) features of Word is the AutoCorrect feature. Well, I haven’t really thought about it until my friend pointed out that one can simply use AutoCorrect to insert images in the document. In most cases, these would be logos and signatures. Here’s how.

Have a company logo or signature available like the following:

In Word, insert them into the document. You can do this, the keyboard ninja way by pressing Alt+N then P and choosing the images in the dialog box. This is the quicker way to access Insert -> Picture.

Once inserted, just select the picture.

The click on the Office Button -> Word Options. Click the Proofing tab then AutoCorrect.

You’ll notice that at the bottom half of the dialog you have there the Replace field. For the example we used “complogo” to designate as the keyword that will be automatically replaced by the image. Make sure that the Formatted text is selected. Then click Add and OK to the close all the dialogs.

Now try typing “complogo” and watch how the word is automatically replaced with the picture once you hit the spacebar.

This:

will turn into this:

Do the same with your signature file using a keyword such as “mysig”. Avoid using “signature” since this will automatically replace the word with the file. You might be using the word in other contexts.

Nifty!