Restore deleted words from the AutoText entry in Word (XP & Vista)

You have inadvertently deleted some of the default entries from the AutoText dictionary in Word. However, you now need them in your documents. Word saves the default AutoText entries in a document template called ‘normal.dot’. The program automatically regenerates this template file if it is not to be found at startup. There is no function to reset the AutoText entries, but you can achieve this by creating a new ‘normal.dot’ template.

• First of all, you should back up all the settings you have used to customize Word according to your work requirements. This is because Word not only saves AutoText settings but also all individual settings for macros, toolbars and formatting templates in the normal. dot file. Thus, before creating a new ‘normal.dot’ template, you must ensure that you can carry your settings over to the new version.
• To do this, click on ‘Tools | Options’ to know where Word has saved the file. You will find the directory under ‘User templates’ in the ‘File locations’ tab.
• Open this folder in Windows Explorer, select the file named ‘normal.dot’, and rename it to ‘normal-backup.dot’.
• Finally close and restart Word. Since the original template is missing, Word automatically creates a new version with all the standard AutoText entries.
• Now copy the old settings to the new ‘normal.dot’ file. To do this, open ‘Tools | Macro | Macros’ and click ‘Organizer’.
• This dialog contains different tabs for macros, autotext, format templates and toolbars with two list fields for each, where the list on the right-hand side contains the ‘normal.dot’ entries and the list on the left contains the currently open documents.
• Under this list, click ‘Close file’ and then ‘Open file’.
• Select the ‘normal-backup.dot’ template that you renamed earlier. You can now copy your personal settings to the new ‘normal.dot’.
• Select the desired entries in in the list on the left and copy these with the ‘Copy’ command.
• After you have copied all the required entries, close the dialog with ‘Close’ and exit Word.
• Word again asks whether you want to save the changed ‘normal.dot’.
• Confirm this with ‘Yes’.

You are done.