Sometimes you may want the spelling and grammar checker in your Microsoft Office program to ignore mistakes in some text. In other situations, you may not understand why the grammar or spelling checker is flagging some text, where the text may consist of a single word or an entire document.What do you want to do?

Add a word or phrase to your custom dictionary

When you use the spelling checker, it compares the words in your document with those in its main dictionary. The main dictionary contains most common words, but it may not include proper names, technical terms, acronyms, and so on. In addition, some words may be capitalized differently in the main dictionary than in your document. Adding such words or capitalization to a custom dictionary prevents the spelling checker from flagging them.

For information about how to use and manage custom dictionaries, see .

Ignore text or an entire style

In Microsoft Office Outlook, Microsoft Office PowerPoint, and Microsoft Office Word, you can make the spelling and grammar checker ignore text. For example, if you insert some text from an informal e-mail message. The e-mail message contains sentence fragments and slang terms, and you want the spelling and grammar checker to ignore the mistakes in this block of text.

In Word, you can take the additional step of creating a special style if you have a certain type of content that you don't want the spelling and grammar checker to check. For example, if your document contains technical content such as multiple blocks of computer code.

Important If you want the spelling and grammar checker to ignore certain text, any spelling or grammar errors within that text are not flagged. Make sure that you advise anyone else who works on this document about your use of this option.

To make the spelling and grammar checker ignore text or an entire style, do the following in these Microsoft Office programs.

Outlook or PowerPoint

  1. Select the text that you want the spelling and grammar checker to ignore.
  2. On the Review tab, in the Proofing group, click Set Language.
  3. Select the Do not check spelling or grammar check box.

Word

  1. Select the text that you want the spelling and grammar checker to ignore.
  2. On the Review tab, in the Proofing group, click Set Language.
  3. Select the Do not check spelling or grammar check box.
  4. Optionally, you can create a special style that is based on the selected text:
    1. Right-click the selection, and then click Save Selection as a New Quick Style on the shortcut menu.
    2. Give the style a name - for example, code - and then click OK.

Hide spelling and grammar errors in a Word document

You may have a Word document in which you don't want to see the spelling and grammar errors flagged with wavy red and green lines, or you may prefer that none of the documents that you create show the spelling and grammar errors.

  1. Click the Microsoft Office Button button image, and then click Word Options.
  2. Click Proofing.

  3. To turn on or off automatic spelling checking and automatic grammar checking for the currently opened document:

    1. Under Exceptions for, click Name of currently open file.
    2. Select or clear the Hide spelling errors in this document only and Hide grammar errors in this document only check boxes.

    To turn on or off automatic spelling checking and automatic grammar checking for all documents that you create:

    1. Under Exceptions for, click All New Documents.
    2. Select or clear the Hide spelling errors in this document only and Hide grammar errors in this document only check boxes.

Important If you turn off automatic spelling checking or automatic grammar checking for a file that you share with other people, you may want to notify those people that you made this change.

Troubleshoot grammar checking in Word and Outlook

If you are not sure why the grammar checker flagged some text as grammatically incorrect, try some of the following:

Ignore original message text in Outlook

In Outlook, you can specify that the original text of a message not be checked for spelling when you reply to or forward the message.

  1. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Spelling tab.
  2. Select the Ignore original message text in reply or forward check box.

Always ignore data in a field in an Access table

Some tables in Microsoft Office Access contain data that should not be included when checking spelling.

  1. While you view the data in a table, query, form, or report, select the field that you want to exclude.
  2. On the Data tab, in the Editing group, click Check Spelling.

    Keyboard shortcut To display the Spelling dialog box, press F7.

  3. Click Ignore Field Name Field.

Turn off fields for the spelling checker in Project

You may have some fields in Microsoft Office Project that you don't want to include when checking spelling.

  1. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Spelling tab.
  2. For each field, click Yes to turn on the spelling checker for that field or click No to turn off the spelling checker for that field.

Resolve other issues

Find links to more information about how to use and customize the spelling and grammar checker in the See Also section.

See also: