Dummy Text (WinXP SP1)

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A simple programming language comes built into MS Word. One Word Basic command can fill a page with dummy type.
1.Start a new document.
2.Type =rand(x) in which x is a number from 0 to 200.
3.Press , and you will see the sentence, “The quick brown fox jumped over the fence” repeated five times per paragraph in x number of paragraphs.

What is it good for? you might ask. I don’t know, maybe good print setup test?

Bob

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What is it good for?

You can also just type the word “WAR!”, and ask the same question.
No political insinuations intended – it’s just that I’m stuck back in the ’70s era of music

Alan

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See here for a more complete description of =rand(x)
This functionality has been around since Word 97 and I have used it to quickly generated known text within a document while discussing word issues over the phone. It’s a quick way to generate q 12 page document for al sorts of testing of styles, formats, paging, etc.

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Cool link.
I got to know the =rand(x) feature in a Woody’s issue, and not long ago I read about the =rand(p,s) syntax. As the KB article points out, if you omit the “s” parameter, the default number of sentences is five. But the KB article doesn’t mention that if you omit the “p” parameter (ie, =rand()) the default number of paras is three (at least in Word 2000). Of course, as you are omitting both parameters, you’ll get three paras containing five sentences each.

Never needed to put this feature to real good use, but if someone knows a similar one, please pass it on, useful or not – I just love wasting my time at it.

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Bob,

In addition to the other answers you’ve gotten, I also use it in the following way, which is an extension of what you mentioned.

If I want to demonstrate different headers and footers for 1st and even/odd pages, I need at least 3 pages of text. So I have students do, if I remember the numbers correctly, =rand(20,10). Similarly, if I’m extending that to multiple sections, each section starts with =rand(20,10). Sure beats having people type 3 pages of text.

Note that the string
=rand(p,s)
where p and s are numbers, has to start on a new line. For some reason, when you enter a manual page break and you’re at the top of a new page, you’re NOT at the beginning of a new line. I think there’s some logic in this (since the page break seems to belong to the next paragraph).

Fred

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Fred,
Thanks to you and all the others above who responded. I have never dug TOO deeply into Words’ workings and appreciate the input.

Bob

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I know this is an old thread but…this is a really useful feature when you’re teaching word processing skills…it saves the students having to type endlessly just to get some text to work with.

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