When The Bold Shortcut Doesn’t Work

A reader wrote to say my shortcut suggestion ( JofA , Aug.05, page 89) for making words bold in Word by typing asterisks (*) at either end of the string (*words to be made bold*) didn’t work. I double-checked and it worked just fine. Plus no one else had trouble with the shortcut. The reader, Antonia M. Lafferty, CPA, controller of CorCell Inc., was sure she wasn’t making a mistake, so she checked further. Eventually she found the problem. Her default setting in AutoCorrect for the shortcut had been turned off. Since then others have experienced the same problem.

Here’s the solution: Click on Format , AutoFormat , Options and the AutoCorrect screen will appear (see below). Place a check next to *Bold* and _ italic _ with real formatting . Notice you can use the underscore line (_) in the same way to set italics automatically.