ms word macros for text modification

Not long ago I wrote a few macros in MS Word to help me along when I get stuck staring at a blank page. One of them generates "words" out of random letters (useful for pseudo-"translation" poems), another replaces misspelled words with a random corrections from the spellchecker (particularly interesting to apply to the randomly-generated/typed "words"), and the last replaces every word with a random synonym (assuming one can be found) from Word's built-in thesaurus.

I've had a lot of fun working with source texts generated by these macros, so I thought I'd attempt to make the macros available. If you click here, your browser will probably open a MS Word file (or at least give you the opportunity to download it). You can't run the macros from within your browser, so you'll have to save the file down to your computer then open it from within Word. I wrote the macros on Word 2000, so if you have another version (especially an earlier version), they may not work (sorry, 2000 is the only version I have access to). I included some brief instructions within the body of the file itself. (Or if you're geeky like me, you'd probably rather modify the admittedly sloppy source code to build a better version.)

An example of a some randomly-generated psuedo-words:

ltdx pqmyteg bdf kkntgrm nwfym xulzkvv ufoh fonx smbtuqy vnkyu xei egtkt pydryq uohtkp gcg qbcv ibvbln smm jyj ekpuoyv uhibv kntbh zsgcecy zgx mml jtq ysuz rysleqq kevmjpp vtodutc cej hics xzdkwf

Those words "corrected" by spellcheck:

lad bode kantar awry upon fun vinyl exit etch hydria out gaga buck nibbling sump jays employs hob knob secrecy sax mill jots sum rise kemp touts conj hick

The result of replacing words in this sentence with random words chosen from Word’s built-in thesaurus:

effect lexis during punishment by hit and miss language select on or after clothed in phrase book