Microsoft Word. Why Am I Getting This Message? "MISSING PROOFING TOOLS Text in Portuguese is not being checked ."

As I wrote, Word isn't very good at detecting languages automatically. Maybe you typed an unusual name or you made a spelling error which was misinterpreted (by Word) as a word in Portuguese. I don't know; I don't speak that language either.

If you paste a text range from an external source into the document, Word may interpret that as another language. "Detect language automatically" is not very reliable, which is why I recommend turning it off.

Note that the list of languages at File > Options > Language does not say anything about the format of the actual text in a document.

Remember that language is a character property. A single word or even a single character may be formatted as Portuguese while the rest of the document is US English. This works the same as bold, italic, underline and other character properties.

Again, try (re-)applying the correct language to all of the text in the main body of the document.

The screen shot below summarizes the steps.

In the yellow banner, the phrase "text in Portuguese" means text formatted as Portuguese. That language has been applied to a range of text as an attribute, much like bold or italic. Language formatting is how Word keeps track of which lexicon to use when checking for spelling errors.

You can click the Don't show again button to dismiss the message.

Also, select all the text and (re-)apply the correct language via the Language dialog box (Review tab > Language group > Language > Set Proofing Language). In the dialog box, also clear the option "Detect language automatically" to prevent Word from trying to guess the language and change the language format at the insertion point (usually this won't be helpful). When you are done, click OK (specifically do NOT click Set as Default, as you are not changing the default language).

Alrighty, I've applied the steps that you've provided above. I hope that works.

By the way, I didn't paste anything into this document - I created this document on my own computer using my own licensed copy of Microsoft Word - typing every word myself from my keyboard - using English.

I did click the 'Don't show again' button.

Again, I don't speak Portuguese, I created the document on my computer using my licensed copy of Microsoft Word, I didn't enter Portuguese text into this document, and I did not format any word whatsoever as a Portuguese text or phrase. So, what in the world makes Microsoft Word believe I need a Portuguese proofing tool written in a language I can't read?

These are my language settings in MS Word. I didn't change anything. I'm just curious why all of this hoopla is occurring to begin with.