Weird Word Tricks
Maybe you don’t know this, but when you search for something in Google, and then click on my blog (or any blog) and arrive here, I can see what you searched for to get here. It’s a bit strange and voyeuristic, but it helps us bloggers figure out what people actually want to read. For example, I know that someone searched for “three asterisk microsoft word” and ended being disappointed on my site (he/she only stuck around for 30 seconds). By way of apology, I offer the answer that this mystery person was probably looking for, along with some other weird word tricks. In the future, you won’t even have to think it before I’ll write a post… :)
1. Three asterisks (yep it’s a thing)
Open a new word document and type *** then hit enter. Word will automatically create a dotted line across the page. In fact, it’s just one of a few examples. === will produce a double line. _ _ _ will produce a single line. ~~~ makes a jagged edge. The ones I could find are in the image below (click to see it full size).
Why would word hide these away? No idea. Not even a clue. I’m not sure what industry or profession was clamoring for this feature… Moreover, as far as I can tell, this doesn’t count as Autotext or Autocorrect.
2. Autotext allows you to finish common words or phrases simply by pressing enter. You may have noticed that when you type “best r” on a new line, you are offered “Best regards,”. If you press enter, Word will finish the line for you. This also works for months (try typing “Oct”), days of the week (try “mon”) and the current date. That, by itself, isn’t that weird. What is kind of strange is how open the possibilities are. You can add your own entries and they can be absolutely anything. Here are dumb examples that I’ll probably regret adding to my dictionary:
and 
3. Autocorrect was designed to take common misspellings (a word that is itself easy to misspell) and correct them for you. acn becomes can. Ammount becomes amount. However, it does much more than just fix your mistakes. Here are some examples:
Those are just some of the many built in examples. However, the possibilities are endless if you create your own. It’s relatively simple to set it up, in your options menu, you’ll see the settings. Here is an example:
When I was a chemistry grad student, I used this feature to turn H2O into 
(something that is not possible on the web, hence the strange image floating above the line)…
4. Random text
This one is weird but kind of useful. Have you ever needed some random text to fill out a space, to check a font or whatever? Try this: type “=rand()” and press enter.
In Word for Mac, the result is this paragraph 3 times:
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
A quick side note, that phrase (the quick brown fox..) has every letter of the English alphabet… The phrase that will print with Rand() is different in each version of word, so give it a try!
I think that about does it. Let me know if there are any other weird word features via email: ab AT justanasterisk.com.
Enjoy,
~ab
Just thought I’d jump in on the three asterisks border thing since it drove me nuts. Even more curious than adding a border without *asking* just because a user typed three asterisks (not an uncommon action) is the fact that getting rid of it if it was unwanted (likely) can often be a lot harder and less automatic then adding it since it is not obvious and not explained. And you think the Government invented Don’t Ask / Don’t Tell.
So just in case someone tries to test this out and/or add a border to their doc, here is a simple way to get rid of it without tearing your hair out. Note that it is not as simple as backspacing/deleting or typing three ~~~ since this is a Microsoft Product.
Home Ribbon
Click the Border Icon in the Paragraph Group (to the right of the Paint Bucket).
Click NO Border
Since this is rant thinly disguised as a helpful hint, let me just say that IMNSHO Word should follow this protocol:
The first time you type three asterisks it should put up a dialog box:
* Turn on Auto Borders (added when you type three asteriks)?
* No, I just want to type asterisks at will for entirely other purposes, but thanks for asking me, the user.
Option 1 Returns a ‘Hint’: [You can remove/turn this feature off in Home Ribbon>Paragraph Group>Borer (Icon) at any time
Option 2 Returns a ‘Hint’ [You can turn this feature on in Home Ribbon>Paragraph Group>Borer (Icon) at any time OR type ctrl-*** on an as needed basis.
I use the fractions a lot, the H20 one is a brilliant.
I liked this blog post a lot because I hit the link looking for a way to search for a word in google that has an asterisk in it NOT as a wildcard. Been having troubles. Any ideas? hehe
Hi Paul,
Searching in word might be worth another post, but basically * is a wildcard. So if you have the little check box ticked that says “search with wildcards” (or something like that) you will be using * to search for any character. “p*” would return Paul. If you unchecked this box, “p*” will only match p*. Wildcards can be very useful but is a touch annoying when the checkbox is still ticked. Thanks for reading!
Michael…you are my HERO!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D
I am writing a novel and was using the 3 asterisks as breaks within a chapter and one of them gave me the dang dotted line! I could not get rid of it! One forum I found said that you had to take the entire document back to “normal” and that would get rid of the dotted line and it would just be a simple matter of reformatting! WRONG!! All of the automatic paragraph indents justified to the right. I thought I was going to have to go through all 400+ pages and re-tab my paragraphs. Your trick saved me a TON of work!!! (I am glad I am paranoid and saved my original manuscript in a different file so that I could go back to it and do your trick!)
Thanks so MUCH!!! :))))))
I’d like to think I had something to do with it too :). Just kidding. Thanks Michael!
Michael is a guest write sometimes. Maybe we can get him to write another post? Please?
LOL Well, it WAS your post that got me here to this forum! :)))
I love all the things Word can do…but not when it does something I did not intend AND when I can’t figure out how to get rid of it :D
Thanks for contributing Shay. Do you have any suggestions for the blog? What would you like me (or Michael :) ) to tackle?