Erase Typing Errors with Spell Check

Excel's Spell Check feature affords you a quick-and easy way to check for any typos in your spreadsheets before sending them out for any kind of review. To spell check a worksheet, click the Spelling button on the Standard toolbar, press F7, or choose Tools> Spelling.

Excel then looks up each word in the Excel dictionary. If it does not find a word (as is often the case with less-common last names, abbreviations, acronyms, and technical terms), Excel selects the cell with the unknown spelling and then displays a Spelling dialog box showing the unknown word in the Not in Dictionary text box, along with suggested correct spellings shown in a Suggestions list box.
 

You can then take any of the following actions to take care of the unknown word:

• Select one of the words in the Suggestions list box and then click the Change button to have Excel replace the unknown word with the selected suggestion and continue spell checking the rest of the worksheet.
   
• Select one of the words in the Suggestions list box and then click the Change All button to have Excel replace all occurrences of the unknown word with the selected suggestion throughout the entire worksheet and then continue spell checking.
   
• Click the Ignore Once button to let the misspelling slide just this once and continue spell checking the rest of the worksheet.
   
• Click the Ignore All button to ignore all occurrences of the unknown word in the worksheet and continue spell checking.
   
• Click the Add to Dictionary button to add the unknown word to a custom dictionary so that Excel knows the word the next time you spell check that or any other worksheet.
   
• Click the AutoCorrect button to have Excel add the unknown word to the AutoCorrect list with the selected suggestion as its automatic replacement.

Excel checks the spelling of the cells only in the current worksheet (not in all the sheets in the workbook). If you want Excel to spell check another worksheet, you need to select its sheet tab to make it active before you start the spell check. To spell check just a portion of the worksheet, select the range or make a nonadjacent cell selection before you start the spell check.

When Excel finishes checking the current worksheet or cell selection, the program displays an alert dialog box that indicates that the spell checking is complete.

Customizing the Spell Check settings

When you use the Spell Check feature, you can change certain spelling options to better suit the spreadsheet that you are checking. To change the spelling options, click the Options button at the bottom of the Spelling dialog box to open the Options dialog box, shown in Figure below.
 

You can use the controls in the Options dialog box to change the following settings:

Dictionary Language:
Select a new dictionary language. (This option is especially useful if your spreadsheet contains British English spellings or French or Spanish terms.)

Add Words To:
Select another custom dictionary to which to add new terms.

Suggest from Main Dictionary Only:
Select this check box to have Excel use only the main dictionary when doing a spell check (thus, ignoring all words that you add to the custom dictionary).

Ignore Words in UPPERCASE:
Select this check box to have Excel ignore acronyms in your spreadsheet that use all capital letters.

Ignore Words with Numbers:
Clear this check box to have Excel flag unknown words that contain numbers.

Ignore Internet and File Addresses:
Clear this check box to have Excel let unknown words that contain URL and Mailto addresses and file pathnames slide. (You know, stuff such as www. google.com and c:\mydocuments\finance.)

AutoCorrect Options:
Click this button to open the AutoCorrect dialog box where you change the settings that determine when certain words are automatically corrected as well as add new automatic replacements.

Note that Language Specific check boxes and dropdown lists on the right side of the Options dialog box remain grayed out until you select a dictionary in the Dictionary Language drop-down list for German, Korean, Hebrew, or Arabic. Then you can use them (depending on the language you select) to determine how their words are treated during spell checking.

Adding words to a custom dictionary

Click the Add to Dictionary button in the Spelling dialog box to add unknown words to a custom dictionary. By default, Excel (as well as your other Microsoft applications, such as Word) adds words to a custom dictionary file named CUSTOM.DIC. If you want, you can create other specialized custom dictionaries just to use when spell checking particular types of spreadsheets. To create a new custom dictionary, follow these steps:

1. Begin spell checking your worksheet ( press F7 or click the Spelling button on the Standard toolbar).
   You can't start adding words to a new custom dictionary until you spell check a worksheet and Excel starts flagging some unknown words.
    
2. As soon as Excel locates an unknown word in the Spelling dialog box that you want to add to a new custom dictionary, click the Options button.
    
3. Click in the Add Word To drop-down list, replace the custom part of the dictionary filename with a name of your own, and then click OK or press Enter.
   
   When editing the custom.dic filename to create a name for your new custom dictionary, be sure not to delete the .dic filename extension. As soon as you click OK or press Enter, Excel adds the unknown word to your new custom dictionary.
    
4. Continue spell checking your worksheet, clicking the Add to Dictionary button to add all unknown words that you want to be part of your new custom dictionary.

After creating a custom dictionary, Excel automatically uses the words in this dictionary as well as in the CUSTOM.DIC when spell checking your worksheets.

You can directly edit the words that you add to your custom dictionary with the Windows Notepad text editor. Open the custom dictionary file (located in the Proof folder on your hard drive) and then make any changes to the entries in this file by saving your changes with Notepad's File> Save command.