"do not check spelling or grammar" will not stay unchecked

Anonymous
2013-04-28T04:05:48+00:00

Hi - I have a document that's been merged from a lot of single documents. When I run spellcheck, I always get the "Text marked do not check has been ignored." So I go to Review, Language, Set Proofing Language, and there is no language set and the box "Do not check spelling or grammar" has the half on/half off box in a box. When I click it twice, it clears, and I set the language to English, but when I go to re-check for spelling, I get an immediate "The spell check is complete", and when I go back to review, language, set proofing language, the check box is back to the half on half off setting and no language set. I am doing select all text each time, too. 

Office Professional Plus, version 14.0.6129.5000 64-bit

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Suzanne S Barnhill 279.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2013-05-06T18:34:51+00:00

Finding elusive "no proofing" text can be frustrating. When you select the entire document, you are selecting only the text layer. This doesn't include headers and footers and may not even include footnotes and endnotes. In one instance, I found "no proofing" text in an unused header. Here's how to ferret it out.

  1. Press Ctrl+H to open the Replace dialog and then select the Find tab (to my mind this is the easiest way to get to the Advanced Find without bothering with the Navigation pane).
  2. Click More>> to expand the dialog.
  3. Leaving the "Find what" box empty, click Format, then Language.
  4. Check the box for "Do not check spelling or grammar" and click OK. You'll see "Format: Do not check spelling or grammar" beneath the "Find what" box.
  5. Since "Find in" allows you to search only one layer at a time, it will probably be quicker to use "Find Next" (the likelihood is that there will be only one hit, anyway).
  6. Note where the found text is located. In the instance I cite, it was in an Even Page Header. Although "Odd and Even" was not currently enabled for headers and footers, Word had remembered the text entered for the Even Page Header, and it was formatted as "Do not check spelling or grammar." I could never have found this merely by inspecting the document in its current state.

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Stefan Blom 353.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2013-04-28T16:27:16+00:00

Depending on the size of the selection, check boxes may appear greyed out; this is by design in Word...

Or you saying that the message "Text marked with 'Do not check spelling or grammar' was skipped" also resurfaces? Have you looked at the style definitions involved? For example, see if "Do not check spelling or grammar" has been added to the Normal style.

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  1. Suzanne S Barnhill 279.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-02-03T23:48:39+00:00

    You might check to make sure that the Page Number character style is not formatted as "Do not check..."

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-02-03T22:37:33+00:00

    I spoke too quickly.  Some page numbers still have formatting that make them check the "Do not spellcheck" box.  Not all of them, but 4.  I've deleted them.  Re-inserted page numbers.  Copied uninfected page numbers.  That works when I apply the fix, but the infection returns after reopening the document.

    The page numbers don't affect the rest of the doc, so I'm going with it for now, but what a pain.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-02-03T20:48:18+00:00

    You are amazing.  This is the only place I found this answer and it worked like a charm.  I had some page numbers that were formatted to not allow spellchecking and, when I used find/replace, it cleaned up the instances, but they reverted back.  I finally erased the offending page numbers and copied/pasted new page numbers from another section.  Just deleting the numbers and inserting new page numbers did not work.  Don't know why this happens, but this fixed it for me.

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