Excel Spelling Check (Table of Contents)
How to Check Spelling in Excel?
In excel we often encountered such cases where we have mistyped a word but still excel does not give any type of error. This is because Excel is more inclined towards working with the numbers and not with text. So this is important that we do a manual spelling check in excel to make sure that our data is grammatically correct. In excel the feature of automatically highlighting the wrongly typed word is not enabled hence we need to manually check for any error by using the spell check option. Spell check is the inbuilt function that is available in excel and can be easily used by the keyboard shortcut that is the F7 key.
Options to Check Spelling in Excel
Let’s look at a few examples and the default options to check spelling in excel.
#1 – Ignore Once
- If the word seems wrong to excel but is actually a correct one then we can choose to ignore the error. To run this function press F7 key.
#2 – Ignore All Misspelled Word
- If there is more than one occurrence of the misspelled word and we want that all such occurrences of the misspelled word should be ignored than we can choose the option of ignoring all.
#3 – Add to Dictionary
- We can also add a custom word to the dictionary of excel so that the word is recognized by excel, next time we have entered the same.
#4 – Change the Misspelled Word
- If we want to change the word with the suggestions offered by excel than we just need to select the correct word and select the option of “Change”.
#5 – Change All
- We can choose not to review the errors one by one, we can just select the option of “change all” and all the errors will be automatically corrected. This function should be used with caution.
#6 – AutoCorrect
- This function will automatically change the wrongly typed word to the correct one if this function is selected. We do not need to do spell check next time.
#7 – Options
- If we are using language that is different from “English (US)” then we need to use the function “option” and change the dictionary to other languages as default.
#8 – Cancel
- We can at any time choose to cancel the pending errors.
#9 – Dictionary Language
- From this option, we can change the dictionary that should be referred to do a spelling check.
#10 – Undo Last
- If we observed later that the last word that we have just corrected was a correct word in the first place then we can choose Undo, the last option.
Explanation
- Spelling check option works horizontally, this means that it will look from left to right and keep on going until the check is done. If we have errors horizontally than also it will first check A1, B1, C1….. And not vertically. So we should first select the data.
- Spelling check works by referring the dictionary and searching the typed words from that dictionary. This is the same as a function of using Vlookup, if the data is present then it’s ok else we will get an error. Same is with the spell check if the word is not found in the dictionary than the spell check will return an error and offer a matching word that can be used.
- In case of using spelling check, excel goes inside the cell value and treats that value as a text and a sequence of typed alphabets as a single word, separated with space. If in case the text that is typed is in all Upper case than this word will not come under the spell check error.
How to Use Spelling Check Option in Excel?
The first step will be to choose the data that we want to check. This saves our time in case we just need to check some of the data.
Step #1 – Choose the Data.
Step #2 – Select the Review tab and choose the option “Spelling”
Step #3 – If we do not want to go through these options than we can choose to use the keyboard shortcut that is F7.
Step #4 – From the window now we can see that which word has been typed wrong. The word that is identified as an error will come under the “Not in Dictionary” option.
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Step #5 – Now we can also see that which word matches best instead of misspelled word can be seen under the option of “Suggestions”. After checking the suggestions we can choose to change the misspelled word with the correct word by selecting the option of “Change”.
We can also choose to change all occurrences at once by using the “Change all” option.
Step #6 – We can now choose to skip reviewing the errors one by one and hence select the option of “Change All”.
Step #7 – By this time the Text that we have will be free from any grammatically and spelling mistakes.
Things to Remember
- This should be remembered that if a text is typed incomplete upper case then this word will be skipped from checking and will not appear in the spelling check.
- Any text that ends or start with a numerical value is also skipped from checking. This means that a text such as “Text 123” or “123 Text” will be skipped in spell check.
- If we have the same error multiple times and we have chosen to ignore all errors than we will not get that error again for the review.
- A word that is previously marked for “Autocorrect” will be changed to a correct word next time it has been entered. This means that if now we intentionally want that wrong word then we need to remove it from autocorrect option first.
- Any web address is also not spotted as an error. This is because the web link is treated as custom text and not as a combination of words from the dictionary.
- If we have entered an address that Is actually the folder address than also this is not spotted as an error.
- If we have added a misspelled word to the dictionary than this will not again come under the spell check error screen.
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