I sat down at my word processor to write the other day, typed in one tidbit of cryptic text, and Word did all the typing for me!

The tool is known as =rand() and it’s part of the AutoCorrect feature’s Replace Text As You Type option. When you type =rand() and press Enter, it’s converted into text in your document. That makes it useful for testing purposes.

To see it in action, open a document in Word and type =rand() and then press the Enter key.

In Word 2007, you’ll see some help text. It starts:

On the Insert tab, the galleries include items that are designed to coordinate with the overall [blah blah blah]

In all, you’ll see about three paragraphs of text displayed.

To control how much text appears, you can use options in the parenthesis of the rand() command. The format looks like this:

=rand(paragraphs,sentences)

Specify a number for paragraphs and you’ll see that many paragraphs. You can add a comma and another number to specify how many sentences appear in each paragraph. So =rand(3,2) displays three paragraphs with two sentences in each paragraph. The text used remains the same help text that appears for the basic =rand() command.

The =rand() thing also works for earlier versions of Word, though the text displayed is different. Instead of the help text, you’ll see the traditional “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” text. Over and over.

To get the original text to appear in Word 2007, use the =rand.old() command.

The =rand.old() command also features the paragraphs and sentences options as well.

Anyone who’s in publishing knows that the traditional placeholder text was Lorem Ipsum. It’s a Latin text that approximates the way English looks, and allows typesetters and designers to work on a layout without requiring the final text. Lorem Ipsum goes something like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

You can get that text into Word by using the =lorem() command. As with =rand(), you can specify paragraphs or sentences for Lorem Ipsum.

There. Now you know a nifty trick you can show your friends, something potentially useless about Word!