Carol’s Corner Office Blog

Any legal secretary will tell you how tedious it can be to continually type in Interrogatory No. 1 or Response 1, and so on through thirty or more Interrogatories or Requests for Production of Documents. If you work in a larger firm that has a document assembly package in place or one that employs a scanner it makes your life a lot easier when it comes to this task. But for the small, boutique firm or solo practice it can still be a pain.

This is where AutoText comes in handy in MS Word. You can combine AutoText with another feature called AutoNumbering to make this whole process go a lot more smoothly for you with way less keystrokes and a lot less time. You can make the phrase an AutoText entry. The key to doing this is to enter the required number using a Field.

Follow the steps below to learn how:

1. Type the phrase you are going to use (i.e. Interrogatory No.), including the and bold attributes.
2. Click on Insert | Field.
3. Use the drop-down list under Categories and select Numbering.
4. The Field name you want is AutoNumLgl.
5. The Field properties is 1, 2, 3…
6. Check the Field Option for Display number in legal format without a trailing period.
7. Click OK.

Don’t forget to turn off the underlining and bolding attributes before you type in the colon!

Now, Select the entire phrase and Add it as an AutoText thusly:

1. Click on Insert | AutoText  New or use the shortcut Alt + F3.
2. This will open the AutoText dialog box.
3. 
4. Click Show Autocomplete Suggestions.
5. Under AutoText Entries, key in Inte or something that will be intuitive for you.
6. Click OK.

You can now start keying in the Word Interrogatory and tap the Enter key and keep right on on going!

Makes like a lot simpler doesn’t it?