How to Turn Spell Check On in Microsoft Word

Spell check is one of Word's most practical features — quietly catching typos, flagging misspellings, and helping you produce cleaner documents without manually proofreading every line. But it doesn't always behave the way you'd expect. Sometimes it's been switched off by accident, sometimes it's misconfigured, and sometimes a specific document has spell check disabled independently of your global settings.

Here's how it actually works, and what to look at depending on your situation.

How Spell Check Works in Microsoft Word

Word runs two types of checking as you type:

• Spell check — flags words not recognized in the active dictionary
• Grammar check — identifies grammatical issues, sentence structure problems, and style suggestions

Both are controlled through Word's Proofing settings, which live in the Options menu. These settings operate at two levels: application-wide (affects all new documents) and document-specific (overrides for a single file). This distinction matters more than most people realize — you can have spell check enabled globally but disabled in one particular document, and it will look like the feature is broken.

How to Turn On Spell Check in Word (Standard Method)

On Windows

1. Open Word and click File in the top-left corner

2. Select Options at the bottom of the left panel

3. In the Word Options window, click Proofing

4. Under When correcting spelling and grammar in Word, make sure these boxes are checked:

   • ✅ Check spelling as you type
   • ✅ Mark grammar errors as you type
   • ✅ Check grammar with spelling

5. Click OK

Wavy red underlines should now appear under unrecognized words as you type.

On Mac

1. Open Word and go to the Word menu in the top bar
2. Select Preferences
3. Click Spelling & Grammar
4. Enable Check spelling as you type and Check grammar as you type

In Word for the Web (Browser Version)

Word Online has a more limited proofing setup. Spell check runs automatically in most cases, but if it's not appearing:

• Click Review in the ribbon
• Select Spelling & Grammar to run a manual check

Real-time underlining in Word Online depends on your browser and account settings and may behave differently than the desktop app.

Why Spell Check Might Still Not Be Working

Enabling spell check in Proofing settings is the first step, but it's not always the whole story. Several other factors can suppress it.

The Document-Level Override 🔍

This is the most commonly missed setting. Individual documents can have spell check disabled at the document level, which overrides your global preferences.

To check this:

1. Go to File → Options → Proofing
2. Scroll down to Exceptions for:
3. Look at the dropdown — it will show the current document name
4. Make sure "Hide spelling errors in this document only" and "Hide grammar errors in this document only" are unchecked

If these boxes are checked, Word will silently suppress all red and green underlines in that file regardless of your other settings.

Text Marked as "Do Not Check Spelling"

Word allows individual blocks of text to be formatted with a "Do not check spelling or grammar" attribute. This often happens when pasting content from other sources or using certain templates.

To fix this:

1. Select all text (Ctrl+A on Windows, Cmd+A on Mac)
2. Go to Review → Language → Set Proofing Language
3. Make sure "Do not check spelling or grammar" is unchecked
4. Click OK

Wrong or Missing Proofing Language

If the language assigned to your text doesn't match an installed dictionary, Word won't flag spelling errors — it simply has nothing to check against.

You can check the active language in the status bar at the bottom of the Word window — it usually displays the current proofing language for wherever your cursor is.

Autocorrect vs. Spell Check

These are separate features. Autocorrect automatically fixes common typos as you type (e.g., "teh" becomes "the"). Spell check flags errors with a red underline but leaves the correction to you. Both can be on, off, or configured independently under Proofing settings.

Variables That Affect Your Specific Setup ⚙️

The steps above cover the most common scenarios, but how smoothly spell check works in practice depends on a few factors specific to your environment:

• Word version — Microsoft 365 (subscription), Word 2021, Word 2019, and older perpetual licenses have slightly different menu layouts and feature availability
• Operating system — The Mac version of Word has a different Preferences structure than Windows, and some options are named differently
• Document origin — Files created in older Word versions, converted from Google Docs, or generated from templates may carry proofing language settings or exceptions that weren't intentional
• Add-ins and custom dictionaries — Third-party writing tools or corporate Word deployments sometimes modify default proofing behavior
• Shared or locked documents — Protected documents may restrict editing and proofing features

A setting that works perfectly in one document or installation may not apply cleanly in another context. The document-level exception setting, in particular, is easy to accidentally set and just as easy to miss when troubleshooting.

Whether the global settings, the document override, the language assignment, or something in your specific Word build is the actual cause — that depends on what you're working with.