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Persistent spell check missing an error

Why is an obviously incorrect word not picked up by Word’s spell checker?

Susan S. complains that her copy of Word has phrases like ‘ Thisis ‘ which aren’t showing up as a spelling error. In other words there is no red squiggly line when there should be.

We’ve had questions like this before. There are various possibilities which we’ll cover in decreasing order of likelihood.


Custom Dictionary

The most likely culprit is the custom dictionary. This is the list of words you have added to the Word dictionary over time.

Usually this list has names but occasionally a misspelled word gets added. That can happen easily by right-clicking on a red underlined word and accidentally choosing ‘Add to Dictionary’.

The custom dictionary is a plain text file usually called custom.dic but it’s easier to edit it from Word.

In Word 2010/2007 go to File | Options | Proofing | Custom Dictionaries, select the custom dictionary then Edit Word List …

Word 2010 - edit custom dictionary.jpg image from Persistent spell check missing an error at Office-Watch.com

For Word 2003 it’s almost the same, go to Tools | Options | Spelling & Grammar | Custom Dictionaries then Modify.


Language

Less likely but always possible is that the text is being checked in a different language to the one you expect, or none at all.

Word 2010 and Word 2007 go to Review | Language | Set Proofing Language.

Word 2003 go to Tools | Language.

Word can’t spell check text if it is set for a language that doesn’t have the right dictionaries installed on that computer. One possibility is that the text is set to a non-supported language, that is the equivalent of ‘No Proofing’.


No Proofing

Check the language setting for the text or document, aside from many languages there is a ‘No Proofing’ option to disable spell checking entirely for the selected text.

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