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When smiley faces don’t belong in a Word document, here’s how to turn them off

A reader seeks guidance on how to tame his emoticon settings

Tamara Chuang of The Denver Post.
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Q: I installed Windows 10 the day before it was going to cost me and at the same time, I installed Office 365 including Word. I do volunteer data inputting work with my ‘puter. Word has been humming along well until about a month ago. At times, I must make a datum entry of (B). When I do that, I get a smiley face with sunglasses. I have always maintained that Word had a mind of its own and we users are there to give it exercise. If you happen to know, could you tell me how I all of a sudden started getting these faces and, more importantly, how do I get rid of them? ~ Jim, from Flagler, CO

Tech+ I <3 this question! Sorry, I just had to do that.

Having sunglassed-smiley faces show up in a business document is not very professional, and some Office 365 users have it online.

You may have turned on in Microsoft Office that will edit your words and make sure there are no misspellings or poor punctuation. The same feature in Office also can replace certain text with symbols, such as (c) with  ©, the copyright symbol. In my Word’s AutoCorrect, the emoticon smiley face does exist in the same AutoCorrect settings to turn : ) into 🙂.

It’s easy to turn off. Settings can be found by going to “Tools” in Word and selecting “AutoCorrect Options,” or for some versions of Office, look for “Options” under the “File” tab. You can turn off the feature or just delete individual symbols. The same instructions work for Microsoft Outlook.

Are your :) automatically turning into a smiley face in Microsoft Word? Here's how to turn it off in Word's Autocorrect if you just can't stand it.
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Are your 🙂 automatically turning into a smiley face in Microsoft Word? Here's how to turn it off in Word's Autocorrect if you just can't stand it.

As for typing “B)” and it turning into a silly smiley face with sunglasses, the capital “B” or number 8 are often used in emoticons to . However, I couldn’t find anything about Word’s AutoCorrect turning a B into sunglasses. If anyone out there has insight into why Jim’s “B’s” are turning into sunglasses, please share it. Thanks!

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