I recently ran into an issue that took awhile to fix. A colleague’s office computer just would not spell check in Microsoft Word 2007 or Outlook. I tried several steps to repair the issue including un-installing and re-installing office. The final fix was to delete a registry key. If you run into this problem, here are few tips on what items to check.
- Check that to see if Spell Checking has been disabled.
- In Microsoft Word 2007, click the Office Button, then click “Word Options” (For Microsoft Word 2010 Click the File Tab then “Options”)
- On the left Click “Add-ins”
- At the bottom of the menu next to “Manage” choose “Disabled Items” then click “Go”.
- Verify that “Spell Check” is NOT in the list of disabled items. If it is, enable it and test to see if spell check works. Otherwise proceed to step #2.
- Check to see if the language is set correctly.
- In Word, click the Review Tab
- On the ribbon, click Language
- In the Language Dialog, ensure your correct language is checked, verify that “Detect language automatically” is checked, and that “Do not check spelling or grammar” is UNCHECKED. Click OK
- Test to see if spell check is working now. If not, proceed to step #3.
- With all your office applications closed, delete the following registry key (you may want to back up the key before deleting it just in case…) KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word Restarting Word will recreate the registry key. Check to see if spell check works for you. If not, proceed to step #4.
- With all your office applications closed, delete the following registry key (you may want to back up the key before deleting it just in case…) HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Proofing Tools\1.0 Restarting Word will recreate the registry key. Check to see if spell check works for you.
In my colleague’s case, step # 4 resolved the issue.
I hope this posting will assist someone in resolving a similar issue.