Everyone knows that Word checks your spelling with red underlines but do you know everything that’s possible in the spell check menus.
Simply click the underlined word to view suggested corrections. Choose the right option, and Word will replace it instantly. So far, so easy.
More choices below the suggestions
What people often overlook are the options below the suggestions.
There are choices to:
- Change the typing to one of the suggested words.
- Ignore the spelling mistake once only
- Ignore the mistake throughout the document (only on one menu)
- Fix the mistake throughout the whole document
- Fix the mistake automatically in all future typing
- Add the ‘mistake’ to Word’s dictionary so it’s accepted as correct in future.
Many of these choices are hidden behind menus or little buttons.
Ignore – tells Word not to show this word as a spelling error in this document only.
Add to Dictionary – puts the word into the Word dictionary so it won’t show as a spelling error in any document. Strictly speaking, it’s added to a Custom Dictionary.
Show context – before the spelling suggestions, the sentence or phrase appears. Click on the speaker icon to hear the sentence read aloud.
Show synonyms – adds similar words under the spelling suggestions. Those alternatives can’t be selected, they are intended as help to define the suggested word.
The complete spelling menu
Turn on both context and thesaurus options to see all that Word has to offer.
Where is Ignore All?
The ‘Ignore All’ option not available on the left-click menu, try the right-click to see that.
But wait … there’s more
For each spelling suggestion there’s another menu of options.
Read Aloud – speaks the word
Spell out – speaks the letters of the word
Change all – fixes any of the same spelling mistake in the document. In other words a quick ‘Find and Replace’ through the whole document.
Add to AutoCorrect – any future time this word is mistyped the same way, it will be automatically changed to the selected spelling.
Right-click on a misspelled word
Right-clicking on a misspelled word shows a similar spelling menu but with “Ignore All” added instead of just ‘Ignore’ (Ignore once).
The “See More” option opens up the Editor side-pane.
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