How to turn off spelling and grammar for Chinese in MS Word?

Question

How to turn off spelling and grammar for Chinese in MS Word?

Luo, Enzo 20

As the title stated, the Spelling and Grammar is more than useless when it comes to Chinese. And is even more annoying if not pain in the *ss when it comes to Chinese and English in one Word file.

How to turn off the Spelling and Grammar checking, for MS Word, for good?

I've tried to Review -> Language -> Set Proofing Language -> Current Document -> Mark selected text as: Chinese -> uncheck Do not check spelling or grammar -> OK

This is not working at all. For one sec the red wave lines are gone. They then automatically reappear one after another.

I'm managed to uninstall Chiense language form the Word Editor, not helping.

Just how can I stop seeing red wave lines under every single character that are in Chinese in a Word document?

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Answer 1

Nam-D 3,395 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hello @Luo, Enzo

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Q&A forum.

If Word keeps re-applying spell check to Chinese characters, you can disable automatic proofing for the document.

Please try the following:

Press Ctrl + A to select all text in the document.
Go to Review > Language > Set Proofing Language.
Check Do not check spelling or grammar.
Click OK.

If the red underlines still reappear, you can disable automatic checking entirely:

Go to File > Options > Proofing.
Uncheck Check spelling as you type and Mark grammar errors as you type.
Click OK and reopen the document.

For more details, you can also refer to Microsoft’s guidance here: Check spelling and grammar in Office - Microsoft Support

If the issue continues, please let me know whether it occurs in Word desktop or Word for the web, and whether it happens in all documents or only this one.

Luo, Enzo 20 Reputation points

2026-03-17T05:03:53.29+00:00

This works with a lil' twist. Make the changes, close any and all Office software, re-open and check, the red wave lines should be gone. Some might still show here and there under some characters though. But that'll be quite minimum and somewhat acceptable.
Nam-D 3,395 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-18T07:57:01.6466667+00:00
Hi @Luo, Enzo,

Thank you for the update and for sharing your findings.

Glad to hear that the workaround helped after restarting all Office applications. As you observed, Word may still underline a few characters occasionally due to how language detection and proofing behave with mixed-language content in Microsoft Word, but this should be minimal.

At this point, the most reliable approaches are:

Removing Chinese proofing tools from Language settings, or

Applying a No Proofing style to Chinese text

combined with restarting Word to ensure the settings fully apply.

Your additional note about restarting Office apps is very helpful and will benefit others facing the same issue. If anything changes or the issue becomes more frequent, feel free to share more details.
Suzanne S Barnhill 277K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2026-03-18T11:43:45.8666667+00:00

If your concern is just with the wavy underlines, there is a better approach than disabling proofing entirely. You can just hide the error marking. These settings are at File | Options | Proofing.
Luo, Enzo 20 Reputation points

2026-03-19T03:59:40.58+00:00

It looks like that this would turn off the proofing for the doc entirely. Actually I want to keep the wavy underline under the content written in English. My concern is the wavy underlines under content written in Chinese only. The solution above from Nam-D works.
Nam-D 3,395 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-19T11:02:26.87+00:00

Hi @Luo, Enzo,

Thank you for confirming that the solution worked on your end. I’m glad to hear the issue is now resolved.

Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions.

Answer 2

Suzanne S Barnhill 277K MVP Volunteer Moderator

To disable proofing for just the Chinese text, create a No Proofing character style and apply it to the text. See http://wordfaqs.ssbarnhill.com/MasterSpellCheck.htm#ExemptingText.

Charles Kenyon 166.1K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator

2026-03-16T13:59:12.97+00:00

Here are instructions on how to create such a no-proofing character style. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/creating-no-proofing-styles-in-microsoft-word-no/999c8de4-dac2-4fac-be07-ab55e8d636cc
Luo, Enzo 20 Reputation points

2026-03-17T04:49:26.4466667+00:00

This shouldn't be the generally acceptable solution. While I myself is 'technically advanced' enough to read through the article and understand the settings, any random non-tech employee will not, and should not be doing this because it's non-intuitive and potentially style-destructive, which the non-tech is already struggling with and absolutely does not tolerant.
If this is a spelling and grammar check issue, the button for a solution should be in, or at least near the Review -> Spelling and Grammar.
If this is not a spelling and grammar check issue, the red wave lines shouldn't be visible in the first place.
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Luo, Enzo 20 Reputation points

2026-03-19T03:46:10.71+00:00

As the one who posted the question, I strongly disagree with the moderator who marked this solution as 'recommended'. I will not further explain myself as I've done this 4 times. None of which made it into the comment as MS deemed my explanation a violation to their Code of Conduct.

Answer 3

Luo, Enzo 20

If Word keeps re-applying spell check to Chinese characters, you can disable automatic proofing for the document. Please try the following:

Press Ctrl + A to select all text in the document.

Go to Review > Language > Set Proofing Language.

Check Do not check spelling or grammar.

Click OK

This, I did. Does not work. The red wave lines disappeared for a sec, then all come back automatically one after another.

If the red underlines still reappear, you can disable automatic checking entirely:

Go to File > Options > Proofing.

Uncheck Check spelling as you type and Mark grammar errors as you type.

Click OK and reopen the document.

This, I don't want to do. I still want Word to spell check the English content in the document.

What I want is, for Word to completely stop the the automatic checking for Chinese content only. Since, Word can automatically detect the language.

Nam-D 3,395 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-16T09:51:35.5233333+00:00
Hello @Luo, Enzo

If Word keeps re-applying spell check to Chinese text, there are an approach that may help when working with mixed Chinese and English content in Microsoft Word.

Go to File > Options > Language.

Under Office authoring languages and proofing, locate Chinese (Simplified/Traditional).

Remove it from the proofing languages list or leave it not installed.

Restart Word.

With Chinese proofing tools unavailable, Word can still detect the language but will not apply spelling or grammar checking, while English proofing continues to work normally.

Microsoft documentation about managing authoring languages can be found here: Add an editing or authoring language or set language preferences in Office - Microsoft Support

This prevents Word from checking that text while English content in the document continues to be checked normally.
Charles Kenyon 166.1K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator

2026-03-18T19:02:28.9266667+00:00

Automatically detect language is fraught with problems, especially with languages that have multiple implementations like English, French, and Spanish. To simply distinguish between Chinese and English, it might be helpful.

If you use different keyboard setups (Windows setting) for the languages, Word will detect keyboard changes and change the proofing language to suit. In Windows settings, you can set keyboard shortcuts to switch keyboard layouts.
Luo, Enzo 20 Reputation points

2026-03-19T03:53:14.2366667+00:00

Keyboard setting might be behind the IME capabilities, as modern Chinese input IME allows input of both English and Chinese without changing the keyboard settings. I could input Chinese mixed with English or vice versa without any changes to the keyboard settings or IME. Therefore Word may not be able to capture that, in my opinion.
I get that the diff. between English and French could be a bit 'nuanced' that Word may have difficulty picking up. However that should not be the case for English vs Chinese. Plus, as a user, if Word say it has the ability of 'auto detect language', I'd assume that it can and will do.

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How to turn off spelling and grammar for Chinese in MS Word?

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