"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. Stefan Blom 353.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2013-11-25T19:20:07+00:00

    As I wrote, this is a display issue only; the same applies to settings in many other dialog boxes, as Suzanne mentions in her reply. Formatting is working as designed.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-11-25T21:10:07+00:00

    As I wrote, this is a display issue only; the same applies to settings in many other dialog boxes, as Suzanne mentions in her reply. Formatting is working as designed.

    Thank you both for the speedy replies!  I understand what you've said about what you're describing being a display issue only.  I think I must be having a different problem, then.

    My most common need for making proofing changes is to prevent spell-checking of dozens of lines of program code (SQL) that I've pasted either into Word documents or into Outlook e-mails (with Word as the e-mail editor).

    So here are my exact actions; I'm using 32-bit Office 2010 on 64-bit Windows 7 Professional:

    1. paste in the plain text (which causes Word to flag many of the keywords as spelling errors)
    2. select all the pasted text as a single block of lines (usually leaving some other text unselected, before and after)
    3. go to Set Proofing Language
    4. observe that the "Do not check spelling or grammar" checkbox is in the indeterminate state (neither checked nor unchecked)
    5. click the "Do not check spelling or grammar" box so that it is now definitely checked
    6. leave the "Detect language automatically" option checked
    7. hit the OK button

    And here's the rub: if I've selected "too much" text, nothing appears to happen--the spelling errors in the selection are still flagged.  And If I go right back into the Set Proofing Language dialog for the same selection, the "Do not check spelling or grammar" option is still in the indeterminate state, neither checked nor unchecked.  So that's why I said it appears that the change didn't "stick".

    If I select fewer lines at a time and repeat the same actions on each smaller grouping, then I observe that for each one, the "Do not check spelling of grammar" checkbox is initially unchecked (not indeterminate), and when I check it and hit OK, the spelling errors are no longer flagged, and then again going back in to the dialog confirms that the option is still clearly checked for that grouping.

    If I were pasting this text from another Word document or some other formatted source, I'd suspect that the clipboard text might be pre-formatted with a mix of language options upon pasting into the new document, which might explain the initial indeterminate state of the "Do not check spelling" checkbox and I suppose could interferre with Word's ability to apply a change to the whole selection (though even then I don't see why).  But in fact I'm pasting in plain, unformatted text.

    In short, the appearance is that it's somehow the size of the selection that determines whether the change can be made to the whole selection at once.  I'd like to understand this and find a way to avoid having to break up the text into smaller selections (guessing each time as to how small to go).

    I hope you have more thoughts on this!

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  3. Suzanne S Barnhill 279.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2013-11-25T22:48:16+00:00

    A more efficient approach is to define a No Proofing character style that you can apply to text you don't want checked. See http://WordFAQs.mvps.org/MasterSpellCheck.htm#ExemptingText for more.

    BTW, it has generally been observed that "Detect language automatically" causes more problems than it solves, and the general advice is to disable it.

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