Why won't my spell-check work?

Q I seem unable to perform a spell-check in Microsoft Word. The program always states that the spell-check is complete but it is obvious that the document has not been analysed for errors.

Word displays a message stating: ‘Text marked with “Do not check spelling or grammar” was skipped’.

I have searched through Word’s options looking for a switch or button that might be used to mark text that should be skipped but I cannot find anything. It has never worked – so any idea what may be wrong?
Adrian Cannon

A As suggested by the message you describe, it is possible to mark text in Word so that it is ignored for spell- and grammar-checking purposes. This can be done on a document-by-document basis or set up so it is applied to all new documents, which sounds like the case here.

You didn’t tell us which version of Word you are using, though from the specific wording of the message we can tell that it must be the 2007 or 2010 edition. However, we also lack details about the operating system used by your PC, which will become relevant later.

To disable this text-skipping feature on a particular document, first open the document then select everything by selecting the Home tab then clicking Edit followed by Select then Select All, or just use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl and A.

Now click the Language button on the status bar at the bottom of the Word application window. (If this isn’t displayed, right-click the status bar and then click to tick Language.) In the Language dialogue box, click to remove the tick from the ‘Do not check spelling or grammar’ box.

However, because you say the spell-check has always behaved in this manner we suspect that whoever set up Office on your PC made the setting permanent, by tweaking the ‘Normal’ template file Word uses as a basis for all new documents.

To edit this, click the Office button (2007) or the File tab (2010) and then choose Open. Use the Open dialogue to navigate to the place where Office stores Word templates.

In XP this is C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates; in Windows Vista or 7, it’s C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates. Find and double-click Normal.dotm to open it. Now perform the same instructions as above and save and close the template.