Spell check underlines contractions of Verb + Not

Well, the original poster hasn't contributed to the thread since October of last year, and basically got run around with a bunch of "have you tried this (I haven't but I have no trouble wasting your time with my off-hand thoughts)" suggestions. 

I suspect that they've done what I have done, primarily dump Mac Outlook for day to day use and basically rely on the web version of Office 365, and the Exchange data sync'd to my iPad and Android phone.  And that's what I'd suggest.

Do you actually use Mac Outlook to compose eMail on the current version of OSX?

Diane is correct that Outlook is using Apple's dictionary.

See if this works:

1. Go to Edit menu --> Spelling and Grammar --> Show Spelling and Grammer.
2. Enter your contraction into the top field and then click the Learn button.

Test typing the word in Outlook now and see if it's still indicated as an error.

FYI, on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) I don't see this issue.

Hope this helps!

I'm having the same issue on Lion 10.7.4 and Office 14.2.2.  I don't recall having it before upgrading to Lion and/or Office 14.2.2 which I did at the same time (from 10.6.8 and 14.2.x).

Doing as you say above does nothing on "doesn't".  It does not come up with any suggested spellings at all.  "Learn" doesn't do anything to correct the problem.

The same words, like "doesn't" are not flagged as incorrect in any other application, includingWord.  It's just Outlook.

I don't see any user domain /Library/Preferences/Spelling file of any kind.

Edit:  I found the OS X spelling dictionary which is here:

/Users/myuser/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary

Indeed that file has the word "doesn't" so apparently it "learned" it.  However it is still flagged as incorrect by Outlook only.

Incidentally, as someone else mentioned above, if I start a sentence with "Doesn't" and it auto-corrects the capitalization, then it is not flagged as an error. Only "He doesn't…" is flagged.

I found this thread when searching for a solution to this problem.  I can't follow most of the originally attempted steps as authentication and user creation on my Macbook is controlled by my company's network administrators.  However, it's very obvious to me that this is some sort of rendering error, not an actual failing with spell check.

• The word get's flagged as an error the instant you type the apostrophe, but the t following the apostrophe does not get the underling.
• If auto-capitalization kicks in, the error underlining does not appear under the capitalized letter either.  On the other hand if you type a space instead of the apostrophe, the first letter gets the underlining even if it gets converted to a capital letter.
• Compare writing 'Dodn't' which produces underlining under the whole word, regardless of auto-capitalization.
• Most telling, right clicking on the word does not have the 'learn/ignore spelling menu options.
• If you cut and paste a contraction, the pasted version never has error markup.

My hypothesis: Outlook is (incorrectly IMO) making a call to the spelling API as soon as an apostrophe is typed, but before any white space.  It flags the word as incorrect and underlines it, but this is prior to the capitalization mechanism kicking in.  When the user types the final letter of the contracted word, it calls the spelling API again, and doesn't see the word flagged as incorrect, so it leaves the word alone, but fails to un-markup the portions of the text previously marked as incorrect.

The simple solution would be to not call the spelling API until you've reached a more clear word boundary than an apostrophe. 

My consulting fee is $10,000.  You're welcome.

I was able to find a way to make Outlook 2011 not see these words as misspelled.  If you go Apple menu –> System Preferences… –> Language & Text –> Text tab and add the words that come up as being marked as misspelled.  Make sure you enter the word and replace it with the same word.  So for instance, replace couldn't with couldn't.  Outlook will no longer see the words as misspelled.

This is a workaround if anyone doesn't want to see the issue anymore.