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Non-dictionary words are highlighting in comment-salmon when my mouse hovers or cursor is on the word. How do I turn it off?

Anonymous
2022-03-08T09:17:30+00:00

I think this is new behaviour. For a while I was getting this large pop-up spelling window that seems to have faded into a highlight.

It's incredibly annoying (to me) for a couple reasons -- not only is it visually distracting, but the colour seems to be the same is comment highlights. My client base is international, so just about every text I work with has plenty of flagged proper nouns.

Is there any way to turn it off? Not spell check as a whole or the innocuous squiggly line, I mean just the highlight or that dreadful popup.

Or, of course, let me know if it's just me and Word shoudln't be doing that and I need to troubleshoot, not customize.

Thanks~

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Charles Kenyon 167.5K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2022-03-15T02:11:17+00:00

    This is not Add-Ins.

    It is a new behavior in Word and there is no way I know of to turn it off other than to roll back to a version before it started doing this (about two months ago).

    Use the Feedback mechanism to let developers know that you are less than happy.

    (They will not see anything you post here.)

    How do I give feedback on Microsoft Office?

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-03-15T20:26:37+00:00

    Thanks -- it's an interesting feature to implement without a way to opt out. I'll definitely leave feedback.

    Rolling back seems like a semi-involved processthat'll take a bit of reading to get right. Any idea what Microsoft calls the spelling pop-up? I'm only seeing a couple instances of "spelling" on the list of current updates, so it's not clear how far back I need to go to get rid of the pop-up and highlight.

    Thanks.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-03-15T01:22:45+00:00

    Hi Kevin,

    Thanks for looking into this. I got a bit distracted (no small irony that I just cobbled together a 100+ page report in Word), but hopefully this is still considered active and I won't need to post from scratch.

    I went to options>add-ins>COMs and disabled everything. I restarted, and then restarted again in Safe Mode (holding down control while Word loaded). Hopefully this address the add-ins/third party software question.

    There are two possibly related issues that accidentally got joined in your reply. There is comment-like shading, and there is a spelling pop-up window. I took screenshots of all three states:

    Here is the basic screen. The familiar squiggly underline is as it should be. The screenshot didn't capture the i-bar, but it's blinking merrily just above the text. You can see from the title bar, Word is in Safe Mode.

    Image

    I added a comment for comparison (the comment bubble is off to the side, but it's the one on the right with the red line pointing to it). My mouse is now hovering (no clicking, just hovering) over the misspelled 'lazie', and you can see its background colour has changed.

    Image

    Lastly, I left clicked on the misspelled word, and this shows the pop-up that has been appearing:

    Image

    The colour and the pop-up are extremely distracting, but I can't find out how they started appearing or how to turn them off. I work extensively in word and the innocuous underline squiggle is sufficient to let me know when there's an issue. Most of my work involves foreign countries with non-dictionary person and place names, so there is a fair amount of underlining. As I review and merge peer-review comments and corrections, my mouse is frequently moving over text. The flashing highlight and pop-ups are very distracting, and I really hope you'll be able to help me suppress them!

    Oh, this is a recent computer build and fresh installation. I have run both quick and online Office repair tools and checked all drivers (graphics, etc.) are up to date.

    Thanks!

    Hello ,

    Sorry about that. It would appear on our end. As soon as I turn on the correct function in Word, the color appears when I hover over the wrong word.

    This seems to be the design in Word. Such colors can be a real distraction, and in order to improve Word, I recommend that you report directly to Microsoft.

    How do I give feedback on Microsoft Office?

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-03-14T20:52:42+00:00

    Hi Kevin,

    Thanks for looking into this. I got a bit distracted (no small irony that I just cobbled together a 100+ page report in Word), but hopefully this is still considered active and I won't need to post from scratch.

    I went to options>add-ins>COMs and disabled everything. I restarted, and then restarted again in Safe Mode (holding down control while Word loaded). Hopefully this address the add-ins/third party software question.

    There are two possibly related issues that accidentally got joined in your reply. There is comment-like shading, and there is a spelling pop-up window. I took screenshots of all three states:

    Here is the basic screen. The familiar squiggly underline is as it should be. The screenshot didn't capture the i-bar, but it's blinking merrily just above the text. You can see from the title bar, Word is in Safe Mode.

    I added a comment for comparison (the comment bubble is off to the side, but it's the one on the right with the red line pointing to it). My mouse is now hovering (no clicking, just hovering) over the misspelled 'lazie', and you can see its background colour has changed.

    Lastly, I left clicked on the misspelled word, and this shows the pop-up that has been appearing:

    The colour and the pop-up are extremely distracting, but I can't find out how they started appearing or how to turn them off. I work extensively in word and the innocuous underline squiggle is sufficient to let me know when there's an issue. Most of my work involves foreign countries with non-dictionary person and place names, so there is a fair amount of underlining. As I review and merge peer-review comments and corrections, my mouse is frequently moving over text. The flashing highlight and pop-ups are very distracting, and I really hope you'll be able to help me suppress them!

    Oh, this is a recent computer build and fresh installation. I have run both quick and online Office repair tools and checked all drivers (graphics, etc.) are up to date.

    Thanks!

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-03-09T06:50:25+00:00

    Hello,

    Welcome to Microsoft Community and appreciate your time taken for sharing detailed information. I understand that Non-dictionary words are highlighting in comment-salmon when my mouse hovers or cursor is on the word. How do I turn it off? I could share with you some of my thoughts on this issue.

    When we tested this on our side, for non-dictionary-type words, there would be wavy lines. And "the comment window appears when the mouse hovers over the word." This is a strange thing. Do you use add-ins or third-party software? If it is convenient, could you take a screenshot and show it to us so that we could better understand your problem? (Screenshots should not contain personal information)

    Feel free to post back if you need any further assistance.

    Best Regard,

    Kevin | Microsoft Community Support Specialist


    *Beware of scammers posting fake support numbers here."

    *Kindly Mark and Vote this reply if it helps, as it will be beneficial to more community members reading here.

    *If your problem is not solved, you coul reply to the post again and we would continue to provide technical support for you.

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