Spell Check not working in Word 365 after automatic update

Anonymous
2018-02-23T19:51:54+00:00

I cannot get spell check to check my document.  Word no longer highlights potential issues, and when I run the spellcheck, even when I KNOW there are misspelled words, spell check completes without prompting me for any problematic words or phrases.  (the update also wiped out all of my macros, for the second time this week!)  

I have checked the proofing options, and everything appears to be as I want it.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-07-12T23:54:34+00:00

    More likely the text was just formatted as "Do not check spelling or grammar."

    Suzanne may be you might want to share with others including myself how you can unselect this without the end user having to clear the entire formatting on a large multi page document? 

    Thanks 😉

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  2. Stefan Blom 353K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2018-07-13T00:57:07+00:00

    Suzanne may be you might want to share with others including myself how you can unselect this without the end user having to clear the entire formatting on a large multi page document? 

    You don't have to clear any formatting. You can select all the text in the document (Ctrl+A) and then (re-)apply the desired language formatting in the Language dialog box (Review | Language | Set Proofing Language).

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-07-13T01:06:02+00:00

    Hmmm..that does nothing at all! You have to clear the formatting for it to pick up a spelling mistake.  

    I purposely spelt authority wrong here and as you can see doing your steps does nothing, but it will work again with a red squiggle if I clear formatting. Can you explain what is going on so others can be helped please.

    Thanks

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  4. Stefan Blom 353K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2018-07-13T20:47:08+00:00

    Well, setting the correct language is an important first step. You didn't say which formatting you had to clear. Often, with spellcheck issues, you must also ensure that the "Do not check spelling or grammar" is switched off.

    You can tell which specific formatting has been applied to a selection via the Reveal Formatting pane (Shift+F11).

    Perhaps you can share an example document where the spellchecking does not work.

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-07-15T18:41:25+00:00

    This appears to have corrected the problem for me. I can now open new documents and live spelling and grammar check works correctly. It turns out that the "Do not check spelling or grammar" was marked (with a square, not a checkmark). This is certainly not something I manually changed. There is the potential that it happened after editing and saving a Word document in another language. Otherwise, I'm guessing it happened after an Office 365 update.  Any idea how/why this would be automatically changed?

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