Checking style in proofing in Word 2016

Anonymous

What happened to being able to check style in Word 2016 when proofing (number of spaces after a sentence, contractions, hyphenated words, etc.)??

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Anonymous

Those Style Options in Editor which were also part of earlier Office versions (e.g. Passive Voice) are now available for Office 2016 Click-to-Run perpetual users in Office build 16.0.7870.2020 and newer builds. New Grammar and Style options and other ongoing enhancements to the experience, will continue to be exclusively offered through an Office 365 subscription.

The "Grammar & More" Writing Style is not available in the drop down yet. To enable the Style Options in Word, go to File -> Options -> Proofing and click on the "Settings…" button next to the Writing Style drop down "Grammar". The Grammar Settings window will pop up where you can customize the checks. You will first see the available Grammar Options and when you scroll down, you will see the Style Options starting with Options for "Clarity & Conciseness".

Just check the checkbox next to the Options you'd like to enable.

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Anonymous

I can finally announce that the update is now available to all Office for Windows subscription users.

Apologies for the delay. The monthly updates always contain several new features or improvements and delays can unfortunately occur for many different reasons.

The English Style options are now available to all Windows Word and Outlook subscription users with Office build 16.0.7369.2024 or newer.

Office for Mac subscription Insiders Fast users are scheduled to receive the update with build 15.28.0.161004 or newer.

We appreciate your feedback. Please let us know if you see false flags (= incorrect flags/unexpected flags), missed flags or incorrect suggestions.

The Writing Style “Grammar & more” is now on by default. All Grammar Options and the two new Options “Wordiness” and “Nominalizations” are enabled. If you like to enable more Style Options, follow these steps:

In Word 2016:

Go to "File" -> "Options" -> "Proofing"
If the Writing Style is not "Grammar & more", please change to "Grammar & more" using the drop down.
Click on “Settings”

Only two Options ("Wordiness, Nominalizations") are enabled by default. You can enable more Options by ticking the checkbox next to them:

To enable the feature in Outlook, please do the following:

In Outlook 2016:

From a popped-out mail window, go to "File" -> "Options" -> "Mail". (Don't do this from the main Outlook window.)
Click on "Spelling and Autocorrect…" in the section "Compose messages". You'll be taken to the "Proofing" tab of the "Editor Options" dialog.
If the Writing Style is not "Grammar & more", please change to "Grammar & more" using the drop down.
Check the checkbox next to "Mark grammar errors as you type" in the "When correcting spelling in Outlook" section.

To enable more Style Options, please follow steps 3.) and 4.) described for Word above.

We've also included many bug fixes in this update.

We're working on improving the Grammar Checker further and will release more Options in the coming months.

Thanks, Nicole

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658 additional answers

Anonymous

2016-07-29T15:31:39+00:00

I signed up to be an insider and then followed your directions and I still only have grammar in the drop down menu.
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Anonymous

2016-07-29T15:08:27+00:00

Hi Nicole,

Given that Office is what used to be called "productivity software", from which any removal of functionality is likely to impact users's productivity adversely and cause nightmares for anyone servicing other users' needs, I think that Microsoft may, for once, be dealing with this issue with something approaching appropriate contrition and alacrity, at least for subscription users.

However, I note that you have said nothing about non-**subscription users of Office 2016. We don't appear to be eligible to participate in the Office Insider programme and we may never receive the update. Don't we matter as well?

While I have your attention, may I also remind you that Word's ReadabilityStatistics("Passive Sentences") has been broken for many years?

When I first came across this, ReadabilityStatistics("Passive Sentences") falsely reported zero, regardless of the number of passive sentences in a document. In Word 2016, it reports "The requested member of the collection does not exist", which is consistent with its omission from the output from the following VBA:

For Each rs In ActiveDocument.ReadabilityStatistics

StatText = StatText & rs.Name & " - " & rs.Value & vbCr

Next rs

MsgBox StatText

This is possibly related to the disappearance of the corresponding writing style option. However, ReadabilityStatistics Object (Word) - Office 2013 and later clearly claims that ReadabilityStatistics("Passive Sentences") exists!

Microsoft is relieving users of considerable sums of money for Office but sometimes maintains the software and documentation in a way that would disgrace a well-run Open Source project.

I wish I had bought Office 2013 instead of Office 2016. :(
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Stefan Blom 352.1K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2016-07-29T12:45:05+00:00

MacWord and WinWord are not exactly the same program, although they are rather similar in the latest versions.

As I already said, information on MacWord updates and fixes will be posted at https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Fixes-or-workarounds-for-recent-issues-in-Word-for-Mac-57153e81-c60d-423c-b6a2-330c92232128?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US.
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