Using the Word Completion Feature of Open Office

This overview will explain the various options for the “Word Completion” feature in Open Office – including how to disable it.

Automatic word completion allows you to hit a key (by default the Enter key) to automatically type out the rest of a word for you. In Open Office, it only occurs after you type a word for the second time in a document, and if that word is a certain number of characters long.

Here’s how to configure Word Completion so that it best suits your needs – or how to turn it off, if that’s what you’d prefer.

1. Click Tools from the top menu and then AutoCorrect Options… from the list of options.
2. Click the Word Completion tab.

3. From here you can disable Word Completion entirely if it’s a feature that gets in your way more than it helps. To do so, just remove the check from the Enable word completion box and click OK
4. As mentioned earlier, the default way to accept a Word Completion suggestion is to hit the Enter key when a word is ready to be completed. If you’d prefer to use a key other than Enter, you’re in luck. You can change the key by clicking the Accept with menu and selecting an alternative. My preference is Tab – it just feels more natural.

5. Another helpful feature to save on keystrokes is to have OpenOffice append a ‘space’ each time you use Word Completion. To enable this feature, just place a check in the box labeled Append space.
6. By default, Word Completion won’t “work” unless the word to be completed is 10 characters or longer. If you are a fan of Word Completion, you may want to lower the number of characters required in a word before Open Office offers to complete it. To do so, just choose the number of characters from the Min. word length drop-down list.