What to Do if Spell Check Doesn't Catch Misspelled Words

Barbara related a problem that she ran into with a Word document: She ran a spell check and Word did not detect several misspelled words. Barbara is wondering why this would happen. There are several reasons why this situation could occur, which means that you need to do some analysis of the problem document (and Word itself) to figure out what is going on.

If the problem occurs in only one document or with some occurrences of misspelled words in a particular document, then that means that the problem is with the document itself. The most common reason is that the text has somehow been formatted so that Word ignores it when checking spelling or grammar. You can find out if this is the case by first selecting the word that was missed during the spell check. Then display the Review tab of the Ribbon and click Set Language in the Proofing group. Word displays the Language dialog box. (Click here to see a related figure.)

Look at the Do Not Check Spelling or Grammar check box to see if it contains a check mark. If either of these settings is true, then Word ignores the selected text when checking either spelling or grammar. Don't change the setting yet; you still have some detective work to figure out the actual problem.

Go ahead and dismiss the Language dialog box for now. You now need to figure out how pervasive the "no proofing" or "do not check" setting is within the document. First check to see if this setting is related to whatever style is used to format the selected text. If the setting is made in the style, then any other text formatted with that style in the document will also be skipped during a spelling check. The solution, in that case, is to either use a different style that allows the proofing, or change the style so that the style permits proofing.

If the setting is not made in the style, then that means that someone specifically turned off the proofing for the particular text. While you can explicitly change it for this particular instance of the word, you might need to change it a lot of other places in the document, as well. If you are sure that you want the entire document to be proofed, then you should simply select the entire document (press Ctrl+A), display the Language dialog box again, and clear the Do Not Check Spelling or Grammar check box.

If you've checked the proofing setting in the Language dialog box and found no problem there, or if the problem of missing misspelled words occurs in more than one document, then the problem is likely with the spelling checker itself. In this case, the most likely scenario is that someone was previously doing a spell check on the document and, when the misspelled word was presented for review, the "Add" button was clicked. This action would mean that the misspelled word would never again be flagged as wrong since it was now added to the custom dictionary on the system.

One quick way to check if this is the problem is to take the document and spell-check it on a different system. Unless both systems share a common custom dictionary or have the same misspelled word in their individual custom dictionaries, you should note that on the second system the misspelled word is properly flagged as misspelled.

If you don't have access to a second machine, or if you think both machines may be using the same custom dictionary, then try these steps:

1. Click the Office button, then click Word Options. Word displays the Word Options dialog box.
2. Make sure the Proofing option is selected at the left of the dialog box. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. Make sure the check box for Suggest from the Main Dictionary Only is checked.
4. Close the Word Options dialog box.

If the spelling check flagged the misspelled words this time, then the problem is in one of your custom dictionaries. You can correct the problem by following these steps:

1. Click the Office button and then click Word Options. Word displays the Word Options dialog box.
2. Make sure the Proofing option is selected at the left of the dialog box.
3. Click Custom Dictionaries. Word displays the Custom Dictionaries dialog box.
4. In the list of dictionaries, select the one you want to check.
5. Click Edit Word List. Word displays a dialog box that shows the words in the custom dictionary. (Click here to see a related figure.)
6. Examine the words in the Dictionary list, selecting and deleting the ones that are misspelled.
7. Click OK to close the dialog box.
8. Repeat steps 4 through 7 if you have any other custom dictionaries you need to check.
9. Click OK to close the Custom Dictionaries dialog box.
10. Click OK to close the Word Options dialog box.

If the problem is still not resolved, then it could be because of some of the other proofing settings on your system. For instance, if the misspelled words that are being missed are all in uppercase letters, then they are not being caught because Word, by default, doesn't proof words that are all in uppercase. Display the Proofing options of the Word Options dialog box and make sure the Ignore Words in Uppercase check box is cleared. If the misspelled words have digits in them, you will also want to clear the Ignore Words with Numbers check box.