AutoCorrect in PowerPoint 365 for Windows

The AutoCorrect feature in PowerPoint fixes hundreds of common typos and spelling errors within your PowerPoint slides, automatically as you type any text. AutoCorrect also maps specific keys to a symbol, such as replacing two en dashes with an em dash the moment you hit the Enter key.

The best part of AutoCorrect is that it works so seamlessly that you may take it for granted. Conversely, AutoCorrect can also be a pain sometimes! You may for example not want the two en dashes to change to an em dash automatically. In this tutorial, you will learn how you can take advantage of AutoCorrect, and also how you can override its options as required.

To see how AutoCorrect works, follow these steps in PowerPoint 365 for Windows:

1. Launch PowerPoint, and insert a new slide within a new or existing presentation. Make sure that your Slide Layout option is Title and Content or any other layout that contains a text placeholder.
2. Within the text placeholder, try playing with some words, and watch how AutoCorrect rectifies mistakes and auto-completes shortcuts:

Spelling Errors

3. Type teh as shown in Figure 1, below, and then press your Spacebar key.
4. 
   Figure 1: The word teh, typed on the slide
5. AutoCorrect replaces teh with its correct spelling, The, as you can see in Figure 2, below.
6. 
   Figure 2: AutoCorrect replaces teh with The

Capitalization

7. Note that, other than correcting the spelling, as shown in Figure 2, above, PowerPoint also capitalized the T in the, since T is the first letter of your sentence. Similarly, the word I is always automatically corrected to be capitalized.

Symbols

8. Need some symbol text such as, a Trademark (TM) symbol? You can type (tm) and the trademark symbol ™ would be entered. Similarly, type (c) to insert ©, and (r) to insert ®.

Long Text

9. If you need to repeatedly enter a phrase or a sentence, you can set up AutoCorrect so as to automatically enter this phrase or sentence whenever you type some pre-decided short text. We cover how you can create your own AutoCorrect entries (short text that translates to longer content) in our Creating and Editing AutoCorrect Entries in PowerPoint tutorial.
3. If you end up with an AutoCorrect version of some text that you don't want changed, you can quickly press Ctrl + Z on your keyboard to undo the AutoCorrect action.


PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcuts

Do you want more keyboard shortcuts?

Explore our PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcuts and Sequences Ebook that is updated for all PowerPoint versions.

4. Save your presentation often.