How to Spell Check in Excel

Like, Microsoft word, Excel also has a spell check feature, but most Excel users do not know or use this feature as Excel is majorly used for number values rather than text data.

Spell check in Excel identifies the misspelled word and users can correct them using this Spell check feature.

If we compare, Spell check in Excel is not muchly advanced as in word where it checks grammar mistakes, misspelled words, and underlines incorrect words but still, it is a good option for Excel users to run this check to identify misspelled words and to correct them.

Run Spell Check in Excel

1. First, select the cell from where you want to run the spell check or select cell A1 to run the spell check from the entire sheet.
2. After that, go to the “Review” tab and click on the “Spelling” icon under the “Proofing” group on the ribbon or press F7 as a shortcut key for spell check.
   
3. Once you click on the “Spelling” spell check will start and if finds any misspelled word, the spelling dialog box will get opened.
4. The spelling dialog box gives you multiple suggestion options to choose any one of them based on the misspelled word with multiple actions to take for that word like “Ignore Once, Change, Add to Dictionary” and many others.
   
5. Now, you can choose the suggestion and click on “Change” to update the misspelled word for this time only or you can click on “Ignore Once” to ignore that misspelled word this time only or can click on “Add to Dictionary” to add that word to the spell-check dictionary.
6. Once you are done with all the misspelled words, it will display the dialog box showing spell check complete and click OK.
   

Spell Check Dialog Box Options

1. Ignore Once:  Ignores the word found as misspelled only once, which means if the same word repeats in the sheet, it will find that word as misspelled again.
2. Ignore All: Ignores the word found as misspelled for all the instances and will not show that repeated word as misspelled again within the worksheet.
3. Add to Dictionary: In case you need any word to be used as same you entered (Mostly in case of Abbreviations) but spell check identifies that word as misspelled then you can add that word to the spell check dictionary so that whenever you use that word, spell check will not encounter it as misspelled.
4. Change: Changes the misspelled word with the suggestion you select from the available suggestions for that misspelled word.
5. Change All: Change the occurrence of the misspelled word with the suggestion you select.
6. AutoCorrect: Changes the misspelled word with the suggestion and adds that suggestion into the autocorrect list and every time you enter that misspelled word, spell check auto corrects that word with that pre-selected suggestion.

Change Spell Check Default Settings in Excel

Spell check in Excel has some default settings that users can change by doing the below steps:

1. First, click on the “Options” button in the spell check dialog box.
   
2. Once you click on “Options”, it will open the “Excel Options” dialog box where you can change the default setting.
3. Now, uncheck or check the default setting options you want to change and click OK.
   

Points to remember:

1. Spell check identifies only the misspelled words.
2. Spell check does not identify the words in uppercase and words with the number combination until you uncheck these default setting options.
3. Spell check does not identify the words within the Excel formulas.
4. Spell check runs from left to right direction row by row.
5. If you click on any other cell than A1 and run spell check, it will ignore the cells to the left of the selected column in that row.
6. If you select multiple cells and run spell check, it will only run through those selected cells.
7. Spell check shows you the misspelled words one by one, which means wherein any cell it finds a mistake, it will open a spell check dialog box to take action on that mistake and once you have done it, then it will show you the next misspelled if any.