How do you fix spelling mistakes on AutoCorrect?
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Spell check in Microsoft Word and other Word Processing apps is a powerful feature. With spell check, you don’t have to worry too about making small
grammatical and typographical errors, because the program will point them out for you in real-time as you type. But sometimes, the spell check feature in word processors stops working for various reasons, mostly to do with your Settings. So, in this article, I will show you 4 ways you can fix the problem on a Windows 10 PC. The first 2 solutions work for the Word app in general, while the last 2 work for a particular Word document. I will be using Microsoft Word 2016 in this
tutorial, but everything applies to Word 2010, 2013, 2019, and some other versions. If you are writing in English and your Word app language is set to French or Spanish, then spell check might not work. The steps below takes you through how to select the right language: Step 1: Click on File in the menu bar and
select Options. Step 2: Head over to the Language tab. Step 3: Under “Office authoring language and proofing”, select your preferred language and click Ok. If your preferred language is not available in the list, click on “Add a language” and look for your language. How to Fix Spell Check Not Working in Word by Turning off Disabling Add-insFirstly, you need to test if an add-in is preventing spell-check from working. To do this, hold To disable an add-in, follow the steps below: Step 1: Click on the File tab in the menu bar and select Options. Step 2: Select add-in on the left. Step 3: Left-click on the add-in you want to remove and click “Go”. Step 4: Check the add-in, then click “Remove”. Do this for the individual add-ins you have and cross-check if spell check is working after each one. This way you'll know which add-in is the culprit. How to Fix Spell Check Not Working in Word by Turning off the Hide Spelling Error and Hide Grammar ErrorStep 1: Make sure you have the Word document open where spell check is not working. Step 2: Click on the File tab and select Options. Step 4: Select Proofing. Step 5: Uncheck both “Hide spelling error in this document only” and “Hide grammar error in this document only”, then select
“Ok”. How to Fix Spell Check Not Working in Word by Turning on Check Spelling as you TypeStep 1: Make sure the file is opened. Step 2: Click on the File tab in the menu bar and select Options. Step 3: Select Proofing. Step 4: Make sure “Check "spelling as you type" is checked under “When Correcting Spelling and Grammar in Word”, then click Ok. Final ThoughtsSpell check is a cool feature of Word that speeds up your productivity. And now you know how to fix it if it fails. You can also apply these fixes to other Windows OS versions as Word works the same way in them. Learn to code for free. freeCodeCamp's open source curriculum has helped more than 40,000 people get jobs as developers. Get started In another article, we described a way to use the Find and Replace function in Microsoft Word to search your manuscript for inconsistencies with formatting, spelling, and terminology. In this post, we’re offering another way to let Microsoft Word help you with your scientific manuscript: customizing your spelling dictionary and AutoCorrect options. Spelling dictionarySpelling errors are common in scientific manuscripts because of the large number of non-standard terms that are frequently used. Some scientific jargon is very different from any English word, but there are also tricky terms that look nearly identical to an English word. These “almost” words, such as proteins known as adhesins (close to adhesions) or the species name Vibrio cholerae (like cholera, the disease cause by this bacterium), can be particularly troublesome. For many cases, Word will automatically correct these words to a term in the dictionary, so be particularly careful to proofread your text. If you have to use a troublesome phrase like this, what should you do? In general, the easiest option is to add that word to your spelling dictionary. Simply right-click on a term that is underlined in red and choose “Add to Dictionary.” From now on, that word will be considered correctly spelled. Additionally, if you misspell the specialized term in the future, it will be underlined and caught during spellcheck (as before), but you will not be tempted to ignore the false-positive spelling errors that arise because the dictionary simply did not recognize a correctly spelled term. Please note that you will have to add plural forms (e.g, adhesins) or verb conjugations separately. AutoCorrectAdding terms to the dictionary is useful for words that you have spelled correctly but may not be recognized by Word. What if you tend to spell something wrong fairly often, and you are tired of having to change it? Or what if you are constantly typing a particularly long and troublesome term, and you would love to create a shortcut? You can make use of Word’s AutoCorrect function to help out. For example, I worked with bacterial protein toxins in the past, and I would frequently write enertotoxin instead of enterotoxin. It was not a huge issue to fix the spelling during the spellcheck (I had added enterotoxin to my custom dictionary), but I eventually changed the AutoCorrect settings to automatically correct my mistake. To reach the AutoCorrect options, click on File, then Options. When the Word Options window pops up, choose Proofing in the sidebar. You can now click the “AutoCorrect Options” button.  You will now see a list of words that will be identified and replaced with a different term, including my example of enertotoxin. Adding terms to this list is easy. Simply type in the term you’d like to replace under ‘Replace:’ and the final text under ‘With:’. You can even include formatted text (italics, bold) if you choose, as in the following example. The bacterium Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans has a name that is a pain to type. If I needed to type this name frequently, I would create a shortcut using the AutoCorrect. For instance, I could type “AgAc” into the “Replace:” field and then the full name, Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, in the “With:” field. Note: to use formatted text, you must first type the formatted text into your Word document, highlight it, and select Copy (CTRL+C). Now the formatted text will be available when you enter the AutoCorrect options. We hope that this post offers you some ideas for simplifying the process of writing your next manuscript! If you have specific questions about your writing, you can always send them to [email protected]. Best wishes! |
