Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Rechecking Spelling and Grammar.

Rechecking Spelling and Grammar

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated March 11, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021

When you check the spelling and grammar of your document, Word keeps track of which errors you choose to ignore. Even if you later go through a grammar and spell check again, Word still remembers your earlier decisions, and it can affect the current check you are doing.

At some point you may want to toss out your earlier decisions and recheck the document from scratch. You can do so by following these steps:

Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 and later versions display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
At the left side of the dialog box click Proofing. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The proofing options of the Word Options dialog box.

Click Check Document (Word 2007) or Recheck Document (Word 2010 and later versions). You'll see a dialog box asking if you really want to recheck everything.
Click on Yes.
Click on OK to close the Word Options dialog box.

At this point it may not look like anything has changed in your document. However, if you do a grammar and spell check (press F7) you will find that Word once again questions everything it thinks is wrong in your document.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (6274) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Rechecking Spelling and Grammar.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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What is 7 - 6?

2023-05-18 04:36:13

Bill

I have the opposite problem with Word 365. I run the spell checker and grammar checker and make decisions to ignore some of the errors. When the process is finished and no more errors are found (and I get no errors if I run them again), I save the document. If I re-open the document and try running the spell checker and grammar checker again, it flags many of the errors I had previously made decisions about during the first run. This is very annoying, since I can't get the document to appear clean without turning off checking completely (which I don't want to do).

Why is Word not honoring the decisions I made about ignoring the 'errors' it thinks it found?

2023-03-11 10:35:49

Elizabeth Mercado

This tip is very helpful to me, thanks for posting!

2023-03-11 10:00:49

Dave Dyer

Would you reprint a macro(s) for use in Outlook.com that i could use for repetitive replies for Office 2019 please?

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