Auto Capitalization (Word 2003)

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Is there a way to auto capitalize the beginning of a sentence that follows a number and a tab? My transcriptionist will start a new paragraph with a number, followed by a period, then a tab space, and then will start typing a sentence. In Word 97 she would hit Enter to go to the next line, and the beginning of the sentence would auto cap. She cannot figure out how to do this in Word 2003 in spite of much investigation by this generally savvy Word user. In autocorrect, the capitalize first letter of the sentence option is checked. She is quite used to this feature and is having trouble adjusting. After two years of begging and pleading I finally convinced her to upgrade from her Word 97 and Windows 95, and now she is ready to kill me.

Lowell

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Hi Lowell:
I know this was an AutoCorrect bug in Word 2000 & 2002. Although Word will capitalize the first word in each bulleted sentence automatically, it will not do this in a numbered list. I wasn’t aware that this wasn’t a bug in Word 97, but I don’t have that version to check. I suppose it wouldn’t be as good to first create the document without numbers (or maybe using bullets) & then changing them all to numbered paragraphs at the end.

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Hi Lowell:
I know this was an AutoCorrect bug in Word 2000 & 2002. Although Word will capitalize the first word in each bulleted sentence automatically, it will not do this in a numbered list. I wasn’t aware that this wasn’t a bug in Word 97, but I don’t have that version to check. I suppose it wouldn’t be as good to first create the document without numbers (or maybe using bullets) & then changing them all to numbered paragraphs at the end.

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I have Word 2002, so I can see the problem. This macro can be run after the fact to capitalize the first letter after every “period-tab” combination. I don’t know that it would be safe to use in documents with tabs used for layout, but in the document you describe, it should do the job for which it was created.

Sub UCaseLetterAfterPeriodTab()
With Selection.Find
    .ClearFormatting
    .Text = ".^t?"
    .Replacement.Text = ""
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchWildcards = True
    While .Execute = True
        ' Found a match, convert to upper case
        Selection.Range.Case = wdUpperCase
    Wend
    ' Reset find dialog back to normal
    .MatchWildcards = False
End With
End Sub

Hope this helps.

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Hi Jefferson:
I’m using Word 2000, but don’t you get the same result with or without the “” before the period? This wouldn’t work if the transcriber was trying to use automatic numbers. I don’t know what you’d do then.

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Thanks for the insight. I relayed the bad news to my transcriptionist, and she was happy that it was a bug, and she is not nuts. I think that she will change her format to use a numbered list with a right parenthesis instead of a period, as this apparently works. I suggested another work around: use the shift key. I barely escaped with my life! Again, thanks for your help.

Lowell

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Thanks for the insight. I relayed the bad news to my transcriptionist, and she was happy that it was a bug, and she is not nuts. I think that she will change her format to use a numbered list with a right parenthesis instead of a period, as this apparently works. I suggested another work around: use the shift key. I barely escaped with my life! Again, thanks for your help.

Lowell

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Hi Phil. You’re probably right. I threw it together quickly as an experiment and didn’t try out all the variations or simplifications.

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Hi Phil. You’re probably right. I threw it together quickly as an experiment and didn’t try out all the variations or simplifications.

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Hi Jefferson:
I’m using Word 2000, but don’t you get the same result with or without the “” before the period? This wouldn’t work if the transcriber was trying to use automatic numbers. I don’t know what you’d do then.

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