Classic Hacks: Generate Random Filler Text In Microsoft Word

Need some filler text in a word document and tired of typing “blah, blah blah”? As it turns out you don’t even have to go to the internet for some good old Lorem Ipsum — Word is able to generate a number of different types of filler text for you with a simple command.

Excel isn’t the only program with handy randomising functions, and Word’s is great for generating as much filler text as you need with a couple of short steps. First, make sure that you haven’t disabled the AutoCorrect ‘Replace text as you type’ option, though it should still work if you’ve disabled certain other AutoCorrect actions.

The rest of the process is pretty simple: just type one of the following commands and press enter.

  • Type =rand(1,2) for text that seems to be taken from Office’s help documentation. This is the closest to looking like proper English text.
  • Type =lorem(1,2) for classic lorem ipsum text. This is considered the standard filler text by many.
  • Type =rand.old(1,2) for repeated versions of the quick brown fox pangram. This may be useful for testing different fonts.

In the parentheses are two numbers — the first indicates the number of paragraphs, while the second is the number of sentences in a paragraph. This means that with a single statement you can generate just a single sentence with (1,1) or a whole page with (12,7). If you skip the numbers altogether and leave the parentheses empty (ie, =lorem()) Word will just insert a chunk of text.

We originally tested this with Word 2010, and can confirm that it also works with the more recent Word 2013.

Lifehacker’s Classic Hacks is a regular segment where we dig up the most popular, useful and offbeat advice from our archives and update it for your modern lifestyle.


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