Spelling and Grammar Checking

Excel has a built-in spell checker that highlights spelling errors as you type them in your worksheet. However, you may want to change what Excel recognizes as an error. Use the following articles to learn how to use the spell checker to conveniently edit your worksheets.

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Spelling and Grammar Checking' topic. Click the article''s title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

   Adjusting Spell Check for Internet Addresses
When you check the spelling of worksheet data, you may want to spell checker to either ignore or check Internet addresses such as URLs and e-mail addresses. This tip shows how you can make a configuration change that will enforce your desires.

   Allowing for Words that Contain Numbers
When Excel does a spell-check of the information in a worksheet, you may want it to ignore words that contain numbers. All it takes is a simple change to the configuration options for the spell-checker.

   Backing Up Custom Dictionaries
The custom dictionary used in Excel contains the information you decide relative to spelling. After a while, you might start to realize how much work it took to get that dictionary just as you like it. Here's how to back up all that work.

   Setting Spell-Checking Options
The spell checker can come in handy when entering data in a worksheet. Because the type of data you enter can vary so much from worksheet to worksheet, it is good that you can configure the spell checker to either ignore or pay attention to certain items.

   Spell Checking Your Worksheet
One of the indicators of a well-done worksheet is if there are any spelling errors within it. Excel allows you to easily identify and correct any spelling errors that may have crept into your work.

   Spell-Checking in a Protected Worksheet
When you protect a worksheet, you can't use some tools, including the spell-checker. If you want to use it, you must unprotect the worksheet, run the check, and then protect it again. All of this can be done quite quickly by using the macros discussed in this tip.

   Spell-checking Uppercase Words
Excel's spell-checker normally checks uppercase words for spelling. If your worksheet contains a lot of acronyms, you might not want those uppercase words checked. Here's how to adjust the spell-checker so it ignores uppercase words.

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