Viva La Auto Text!

About sixth months ago or so, the IT department at my company started telling everyone that come the first quarter or 2011 all of the computers in the company would be upgraded to Office 2010.

Pretty good idea huh?  I mean, upgrading computer software is always a good idea.  (Note to self, run update check on Mac...)

Soon after the news of Office 2010 was announced a rumor started to spread through the office, slowly at first, but then gaining speed like a runaway freight train.

The rumor?  That as awesome as Office 2010 was touted to be, it wouldn't have the Auto Text feature.

(Insert tire screech sound effect here)

Excuse me?  But Auto Text happens to be the best most awesomest feature in the entire history of computers.  Screw the ability to order pizzas or perform surgery from your computer - nothing beats the ability to type only 3 words and have an entire 2 page letter magically appear on the screen.  It's a lazy employees best friend.

So last week the training schedule for Office 2010 came out and people went into sheer blood panic mode.  They started saving their auto text items and e-mailing them to their home accounts, lest the new software completely destroy all their hard work.  The rumors spread faster as the panic levels increased.  At my birthday lunch yesterday someone mentioned it and I was afraid people were going to abandon their tasty Olive Garden* and go running for the hills.

Later on yesterday, the first group of space monkeys went to Office 2010 training.  One of them came back after 2 hours, stopped right in my cubicle and said "Um, there's Auto Text in 2010".

(Insert tire screech sound effect here)

Huh?  What?  How could this be?  I specifically remember someone telling me that Office 2010 didn't have Auto Text.  Of course, I couldn't remember who told me, just that someone had.  Which is probably why my fellow coworkers and I spent the next 5 minutes all blaming each other for starting such a horrible rumor.

In the midst of this, the trainer walks by and we ask, our hearts full of hope, "Is it true?  Does Office 2010 have Auto Text?"

We waited for her answer with bated breath.

"Um, yeah, of course it does.  But it just isn't called Auto Text.  I think it's called Quick Parts or something like that."

So I guess whoever started the rumor wasn't entirely wrong, whoever that cruel soul was...

~ The Office Scribe

*  Random thought that I had while staring at the Olive Garden bag from my lunch.  Where are the olives?  Where are there grapes on their logo and not olives?  And also, as a person who just came back from Israel and saw A LOT of olive trees, the only time I saw them in a "garden" were in the Garden of Gethsamene, which leads me to believe that the fine folks at the Olive Garden believe their food to be Christ like. 


And you thought my manic thoughts only happened on Mondays...