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Sometimes you have to write. Sometimes you just need some filler. I was working on a fictitious document and needed some text to make it look like a real document. (Yeah, it’s one of the things I do). While I was looking for that usual “Lorem Ipsum” text, I remembered that Word can generate random text. The RAND command works for Excel (filling cells with numbers) and Word (paragraphs of writing). The command is
=RAND()
Simply insert the number of random items you want in the parentheses. You can do the same for Word, and it will add that number of paragraphs (however the text repeats after three paragraphs). You can read more about RAND commands at Office.com.
Random text generated by a computer is getting smarter. A recent article in the New York Times spotlighted the statistical sports site StatSheet. Usually a number-crunching site, it started generating previews and recaps of college basketball games that no human had written. The computer program looks over the data and spits out text. This “automated content” has some surprising results (including faux pas like boasting a team is “undefeated” when it was 1-0). However, it does a decent job in providing the news.
StatSheet is trying to fill a niche: writing daily articles for smaller colleges and high schools that usually don’t command attention, or paying sportswriters to watch and report about the game.
Where can you see data that could be made into automated content?
--Doug Thomas
Comments: (6) Collapse
In Word (any version), you can specify how many paragraphs of random text you want, and how many sentences in each paragraph. For example, if you type =rand(8,5) and press Enter, Word will spit out 8 paragraphs of filler text consisting of 5 sentences each. (After that, I usually press Ctrl + A, then Ctrl + 0 to select all text and insert 12 points of space above each paragraph.)
Also: in Word 2003 and older, the dummy text will be "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" over and over. But in Word 2007 and 2010, the text will be taken randomly from help files. This is an improvement, since the words and sentences will be of varying length.
It was useful to me.
Bob: Thanks for the additional information!
in Word 2007 and 2010 you can type =lorem() Enter which generates the lorem ipsum text. It really impresses my audience - Word is so clever :) !
Hi Doug. I am trying to use your schedule template for my three stores. Your template is good for 20 employees and 9 shifts. I have 26 employees and 15 shifts. How do I expand the lists to allow more employees and shifts. Thanks for your time.
ostrom1979:
I don't know what kind of template you have, but it it's Excel, copy one line, highlight six empty rows and paste. FInd more at Microsoft Answers: answers.microsoft.com/.../default.aspx
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