spell checker highlighting not working for some docs

Jan Wagner · External Since: Jul 13, 2005 Posts: 9

Hi,

this has been happening in Word since Office97, 2000, and 2003. No
common plugins or extensions used. I really wonder why MS still has
not fixed this (in addition to very many other bugs and annoyances
still hanging around since Office97).

Anyway, with this highlighting problem, oddly only certain documents
are affected, in other documents it works fine.

There isn't any immediately obvious difference between the
documents. All documents are original .doc's (not converted from
some other format), and contain text in two or more languages, but
I've set the entire document spellchecking language to just one
common language (e.g. US English).

In the problem documents I've already done exactly as described in

http://officearticles.com/word/spell_check_doesnt_work_in_microsoft_word.htm

several times (Ctrl-A, Set Language, remove those checks, press F7
to recheck doc, ...) to no avail, the highlighting (in red) of
spelling errors still does not work. Also, some formatting/grammar
suggestions are randomly highlighted (in green), but only for the
existing text and never for new text typed in.

This is effing frustrating, really! Any ideas how to get the spell
checker to behave (in Word 2003)? As I'd like to have the spelling
mistake highlighting working for /all/ documents, thank you! Smile

Thoughts? Anyone here experience the same problem? Solutions?

- Jan

Michelle Chumash · External Since: Feb 01, 2006 Posts: 1

This is happening to me also, however even worse, it keeps changing me to a
French dictionary even though my entire document is written in english. The
link you had there helped me get rid of the french, but the spell check is
not working for ANY text and especially not new text that I type in. And all
the settings for type as you go spell checking are on.

"Jan Wagner" wrote:

> Hi,
>
> this has been happening in Word since Office97, 2000, and 2003. No
> common plugins or extensions used. I really wonder why MS still has
> not fixed this (in addition to very many other bugs and annoyances
> still hanging around since Office97).
>
> Anyway, with this highlighting problem, oddly only certain documents
> are affected, in other documents it works fine.
>
> There isn't any immediately obvious difference between the
> documents. All documents are original .doc's (not converted from
> some other format), and contain text in two or more languages, but
> I've set the entire document spellchecking language to just one
> common language (e.g. US English).
>
> In the problem documents I've already done exactly as described in
>
> http://officearticles.com/word/spell_check_doesnt_work_in_microsoft_word.htm
>
> several times (Ctrl-A, Set Language, remove those checks, press F7
> to recheck doc, ...) to no avail, the highlighting (in red) of
> spelling errors still does not work. Also, some formatting/grammar
> suggestions are randomly highlighted (in green), but only for the
> existing text and never for new text typed in.
>
> This is effing frustrating, really! Any ideas how to get the spell
> checker to behave (in Word 2003)? As I'd like to have the spelling
> mistake highlighting working for /all/ documents, thank you! Smile

>
> Thoughts? Anyone here experience the same problem? Solutions?
>
> - Jan
>

Jan Wagner · External Since: Jul 13, 2005 Posts: 9

Michelle Chumash wrote:
> This is happening to me also, however even worse, it keeps changing me to a
> French dictionary even though my entire document is written in english. The
> link you had there helped me get rid of the french, but the spell check is
> not working for ANY text and especially not new text that I type in. And all
> the settings for type as you go spell checking are on.

Ok so you've the same problem Neutral

Good that the link helped a bit,
though.

Wonder if there is any way to report such bugs back to Microsoft.
There certainly does not seem to be any such contact information on
their web site (or?)

The only bug submission form I found is at
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/default.aspx
and it doesn't include MS Office. Other than that, customer support
wants me to pay some silly sum before contacting them.

Hmm. Would any MSVP's here perhaps know where to forward bug
reports? Would be nice... Also, an example document, reduced to one
page, is now at
http://users.tkk.fi/~jwagner/tablet/Word-spellchecker-ProblemDoc-2.doc

regards,
- Jan

Michelle Chumash · External Since: Feb 02, 2006 Posts: 1

I was finally able to get everything working.
1. renamed my normal.dot to normal.old,
2. closed word and opened it again.
3. went to tools -> Language and set it to English and unchecked the
autodetect language checkbox.
4. saved my blank document to the desktop.
5. closed word and opened it again
Everything started working fine for me after that. give it a shot...

"Jan Wagner" wrote:

> Michelle Chumash wrote:
> > This is happening to me also, however even worse, it keeps changing me to a
> > French dictionary even though my entire document is written in english. The
> > link you had there helped me get rid of the french, but the spell check is
> > not working for ANY text and especially not new text that I type in. And all
> > the settings for type as you go spell checking are on.
>
> Ok so you've the same problem Neutral

Good that the link helped a bit,
> though.
>
> Wonder if there is any way to report such bugs back to Microsoft.
> There certainly does not seem to be any such contact information on
> their web site (or?)
>
> The only bug submission form I found is at
> http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/default.aspx
> and it doesn't include MS Office. Other than that, customer support
> wants me to pay some silly sum before contacting them.
>
> Hmm. Would any MSVP's here perhaps know where to forward bug
> reports? Would be nice... Also, an example document, reduced to one
> page, is now at
> http://users.tkk.fi/~jwagner/tablet/Word-spellchecker-ProblemDoc-2.doc
>
> regards,
> - Jan
>

Cindy M -WordMVP- · External Since: Jun 21, 2004 Posts: 1830

Hi Jan,

> Any ideas how to get the spell
> checker to behave (in Word 2003)? As I'd like to have the spelling
> mistake highlighting working for /all/ documents, thank you! Smile

>
Often - not always - spell check will stop marking documents if there
are too many spelling errors. This can happen if the document has
been formatted with the wrong language, or contains lots of
programming code, for example.

Other than that, the only other thing I've ever been able to narrow
it down to is damaged internal file structures.

Your statement that only certain documents are affected could meet
either of these criteria, but I'm guessing the second would be more
likely. One way to test the hypothesis would be
- rename Normal.dot to NormalOLD.dot
- start Word (new Normal.dot will be generated)
- open such a problem document and copy a segment of text where
you'd expect spelling errors to be marked, but they aren't
- in a new document, use Edit/Paste Special to paste as plain
text. Does the spell check kick in?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow
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Jan Wagner · External Since: Jul 13, 2005 Posts: 9

Michelle Chumash wrote:
> I was finally able to get everything working.
> 1. renamed my normal.dot to normal.old,
> 2. closed word and opened it again.
> 3. went to tools -> Language and set it to English and unchecked the
> autodetect language checkbox.
> 4. saved my blank document to the desktop.
> 5. closed word and opened it again
> Everything started working fine for me after that. give it a shot...

Thanks, that worked for stuck language, though it did not yet for
the missing spell checker underlining/highlighting. Though cut&paste
of sections of the problem doc into a new document makes the
highlighting work in the new document. Odd. Smile

- Jan

Jan Wagner · External Since: Jul 13, 2005 Posts: 9

Hi Cindy,

thanks for your reply!

Cindy M -WordMVP- wrote:
> Hi Jan,
>
>> Any ideas how to get the spell
>> checker to behave (in Word 2003)? As I'd like to have the spelling
>> mistake highlighting working for /all/ documents, thank you! Smile

>>
> Often - not always - spell check will stop marking documents if there
> are too many spelling errors. This can happen if the document has
> been formatted with the wrong language, or contains lots of
> programming code, for example.

That might be it, then, although there never appeared any error
messages or warnings about too many spelling errors.

Removing Normal.dot (tried in Word 2003 and 2002 on different
machines) didn't have the desired effect in those documents, but
cut&paste of small(!) sections of such a problem document into a new
blank document makes the marking work again. That was both with
normal Paste and Paste Special as plain text. Probably the original
authors of the problem documents had formatted them with the wrong
language.

It's a bit odd though why Word would check the entire document to
mark spelling errors, instead of only checking and marking the text
that is currently visible on the screen. Also strange why it refuses
to start working again even if a problem document is trimmed down to
only a few sentences, or the language set to the correct one, and
the checker is re-run with F7.

There doesn't seem to be a way to reset or restart the spell checker
for a document. Or is there? (almost as if Word would itself
corrupt the document somehow Sad

Oh well. Guess I'll have to use your implied cut&paste workaround in
small text snippets to rebuild such documents.

Luckily I never paid anything for the Office's, otherwise these
unresolved legacy bugs would bug me even more Wink

) But I'd still
appreciate some hints as to where to file a bug report. Maybe MS
isn't even aware of the problem Smile

- Jan

Cindy M -WordMVP- · External Since: Jun 21, 2004 Posts: 1830

Hi Jan,

> There doesn't seem to be a way to reset or restart the spell checker
> for a document. Or is there? (almost as if Word would itself
> corrupt the document somehow Sad

>
Only Tools/OPtions/Spelling and Grammar. There's a "Recheck" button in
there.

Sometimes, if I press F7 to force a full spell check, that will give a
recalcitrant document a "nudge in the right direction".

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question
or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail Smile