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If my aging memory serves me, I have a problem with WORD's spellchecker not working on a file every couple of years, long enough for me to not recall how it was fixed, although my memory tells me it eventually fixes itself, but for no good reason I can ever figure out. I tried the easy and longer repairs of Office 365 and a reboot but it did not help. This is an example of the offending phrase:
<< Ye,s this does happen with the cram down for failure to cotnrivute captial >>
I notice that this post has a spellchecker that identifies two of the three spelling errors. Word isn't identifying any of them. Here's two clues. I may have copied this text into the word doc from what was starting out as a reply in Outlook - I didn't notice if Outlook was showing the typos. If I copy it into a new WORD document (i think it showed HTML formatting as the default for pasting it), the problem remains. However, if I copy it a second time but use unformatted text when pasting it (in the same new document), then the errors do show up in WORD. So, to me, it seems that the HTML format I am using in Outlook is the source of the problem. Does that help?
Thanks much!
Dean
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Select the entire document and go to the Language dialog; make sure that the "Do not check spelling or grammar" check box is completely clear (not checked or shaded); you may need to click once or twice to clear it.
Proofing and language settings are applied to text in Word at a word (or even character) level, just like font attributes, and this setting can ride in on pasted text and then be applied to any text entered following the pasted text.
In the desktop version of Word, the path to the Language dialog is Review | Language | Language | Set Proofing Language, but if you add the Language button to your status bar, you can access the dialog with a single click.
I agree with Suzanne about putting Language on your Status bar. It is a key step because it gives access with a single mouse click.
The key concept here is that this setting can be set for individual characters, like Bold or Italics, but invisible. It can be pasted in from other documents. Here is my article on addressing these problems.
Spelling Checker Does Not Work! - Proofing Language Keeps Changing - Solutions
Generally for single documents, what works is to select all text and examine the proofing language settings. Make sure that the box to not check is empty (clear).
Note, I do use this setting regularly and even have a character style set up to do so.
To be clear, it's definitely Microsoft 365. It's the version that you pay annually for. At one point, my boss insisted I switch to it from the desktop version because he and I would occasionally get ever so slightly different answers in EXCEL and he didn't want us to be wasting time figuring out why they were different. I believe that problem did go away when we both got the annual subscription version. Why I am still paying for that version, comparing to buying a desktop version, I am not sure TBH. I think it used to come with free phone support which made it well worth it but, I think, they no longer provide such and, in fact, referred me to this on-line forum(s) for help, at some point, which, I suspect, is available to anyone, right? So, maybe I should go back to the desktop. Is there any advantage to the annual version if i can afford the desktop version which, in the long run should be cheaper?
In any event, thanks so much for your help.
In many/most Microsoft 365 plans you have the desktop applications downloadable.
You can tell whether you are using the Online version by looking at the Ribbon, if nothing else.
This question comes up often enough that I've placed that macro with a keyboard shortcut into a short Add-In that can be downloaded.
Here is information with a link to download it.