Random Text

Have you ever needed to generate just a bunch of random text in Word? This may sound a little weird, but it can happen. Perhaps you’re working on a document template and you want to make sure the layout is going to look the way you want. Maybe you’re trying to troubleshoot a printer and just need a document with some text. Whatever the case, Microsoft has a nifty solution for you.

With Microsoft Word (I believe the feature was introduced in 2007) you an automatically generate a specified number of paragraphs using the RAND command. To  use this command, wherever you want your random text inserted in your document, just type in the following:

=RAND()

Inside the parentheses, simply put the number of paragraphs you want to be generated. Keep in mind that the paragraphs will repeat after the third one. But, then, for most of the reasons I can think of to generate random text, you probably are less concerned with content than you are with not having to just type “kdkaldfj  adkljfldkja  dlkjflsjkd   lkdjlkdf “ for several paragraphs (or..*yikes*…pages!).

I know that, for me, in the past I would type a bunch of junk like that until I had a couple lines, then I would copy it and paste a few more lines. Then I would copy the larger body of junk text and paste that. I’d keep doing that until I had enough text to do what I needed. This command sure will make that a whole lot easier. In about 2.4 seconds, I was able to generate almost two pages of random text using this command.

Read the full article on random text and feel free to share with us some of the neat little “hidden” or less-well-known features of the Microsoft Office apps.