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

Anonymous
2013-03-26T00:45:00+00:00

I just upgraded to a full version of MS Office 2013. I am using Word and notice two things. One, it is not auto-correcting misspelled words as I type, and two, when I go to the "Review" tab and select "Spelling and Grammar" to do a spell check, it says "Spelling and grammar complete. You're good to go!" This is not correct. 

I've gone to the Options menu. Autocorrect is turned on. Nothing else seems to make logical sense to me.

Is anyone else having this issue? Can someone help? I NEED my spell check.

Thank you

PS. My OS is Win7, 64-bit and I'm using Office 2013.

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  1. Suzanne S Barnhill 279.2K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-10-12T21:47:31+00:00

    Thanks for the clarification, Nicole.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-10-12T21:27:18+00:00

    Make sure to press the "Set as default language" button before you press okay, otherwise the problem will arise again next time you open word

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-10-12T21:24:25+00:00

    Honestly, I did not read all the replies to this and I DO know this was posted two years ago. I just had this problem and fixed it on my own.

    As most people said, go under the "Reference" tab and click "Language" and then click "Do not correct spelling or grammar errors"

    Afterword's, I pressed "Set as Default Language" (Make sure your language is correct).

    Then I exited the program and started it back up. It now works perfectly fine

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-10-12T17:33:56+00:00

    Hi all

    I just wanted to clarify what errors the grammar checker in Word will find vs. not find.

    For each grammar error a separate rule needs to be implemented to target the type of error. Since it's not possible to implement a rule for every potential grammar error (this would be an infinite set, since one can build an infinite set of sentences in a given language), we choose to target grammar errors which people often make. That's why nonsense sentences are not highlighted by the grammar checker. We have no rule to target such errors since they are very infrequent or non-existing in real world user data.

    If you go to File/Options/Proofing and click the Settings button under Writing Style, you see what grammar rules are available. E.g. Subject Verb Agreement is one of them. Please note however, that the Grammar checker won't be able to find every possible Subject Verb agreement error. Grammar Checking is very difficult due to ambiguity inherent to language and complex syntax structures. There are many exceptions to most rules and the grammar checker tries to be careful to avoid highlighting a correct sentence which may be superficially similar to a sentence that contains an error. For example, consider this sentence:

    "Did you pick up my dish or the dog's?"  

    The word "dish" is not repeated anymore after "dog's", so the Grammar Checker needs to be able to identify that the writer means "the dog's dish". If it gets that wrong it may falsely highlight "dog's" and suggest "dogs" instead to create a sentence similar to "Did you pick up the dogs?"

    I hope this helps.

    Thanks

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