spell check is not working...how do I turn it on? (MS Word 2013)

Please do check that page.

Mastering the Spelling Checker

This is like text formatting that you can't see. It can be applied to a single word or even character. If that is copied and expanded, the formatting is on everything that comes from that, just as if the text were a color or bold.

The problem comes when people assume (naturally, that it applies to an entire document, or even an entire paragraph.

Without any notice or change, Spell Check in Word 2013 with Win 8.1 stopped working. As others have said, obviously misspelled words were not highlighted and I could select them and Review / Spell Check and Spell Check told me there was nothing wrong. It took a couple tries and a reboot, but I highlighted the entire document (Control Shift End all at the same time), clicked on Review / Language / Set Proofing Language and found the "Do not spell check" showed partial checked. This means there were some parts of the doc that were not to be spell checked. Have no idea how that happened. I unchecked the "Do not spell check, saved the doc, closed Word, rebooted, and everything worked again. Fingers crossed. Only lost an hour of productivity diagnosing, researching, and fixing the problem. Grrrrr.

Here is a macro that does this in the body of the document. (It will not reach headers, footers, or text boxes).

Sub SpellCheckLanguageReplace()

'

' SpellCheckLanguageReplace Macro

' Replaces "do not check" setting with check setting.

'

' Written 4 Sep 2015 by Charles Kenyon

' Distributed "as is"

'

    With Selection.Find

        .ClearFormatting

        .NoProofing = True

        .Replacement.ClearFormatting

        .Replacement.NoProofing = False

        .Text = ""

        .Replacement.Text = ""

        .Forward = True

        .Wrap = wdFindContinue

        .Format = True

        .MatchCase = False

        .MatchWholeWord = False

        .MatchWildcards = False

        .MatchSoundsLike = False

        .MatchAllWordForms = False

        .Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

        .ClearFormatting

        .Replacement.ClearFormatting

    End With

End Sub

For information on what to do with this macro see Installing Macros.

Yes, I second this. I did a mail merge into Word from an Excel document. There were several misspellings but Word was not showing any spelling errors. I could be wrong, but it appears that when merging from Excel, it automatically defaults to "do not check for spelling or grammar" under the language settings. No matter how many times I uncheck it, it still re-checks itself. 

My solution: Select all the text and hit Ctrl + spacebar. Once you do this, two things happen: 1) the "do not check for spelling and grammar" automatically becomes unchecked, and 2) any misspellings and grammar issues will be revealed. (Unfortunately it also removes formatting such as bold, italics, etc.) 

What is set for "do not check" is the text merged in, not the entire document.

You can do a replace for that setting if you want to remove such formatting.

You first click in the find box and using Format > Language you get the "do not check" setting checked. Then move to the replace with box and use Format > Language to get it clear (unchecked). Your replace dialog should look like the one above. Then click on Replace All.

It is a key thing to remember that the language setting is not a document or even paragraph setting, it is set for each character.