Quick Text Generation in Word

Here’s a trick that comes in useful if, say, you have a blank Word doc you want to populate quickly to check out formatting and layout. A simple command will dump a block of sample text into your Word doc. You just type it in to the main document and press Return, no opening special dialogs or VB windows or anything.

1. Open your Word doc.
2. Go to a new blank line.
3. Type:
   =rand()
4. Hit Return.
5. Count to 3 and be delighted. 🙂

Notes:

• If you know how much text you want (a small bit, a big bit, loads of paragraphs, or one enormous block to test widow/orphan settings), you can pass 2 number parameters to rand:
  =rand(a,b)
  a is the number of paragraphs you want, b is the number of sentences in each paragraph. By default, with no params, you get 3 of each.
• If you have a fondness for Lorem ipsum, you can use the =lorem() function to do much the same thing, but with passages of lorem ipsum instead of blocks of English text.