Spell Check Not Working in Word? Clear the Proofing Language Setting

Word has stopped flagging obvious typos — no red squiggles, no grammar warnings, and running Editor or Spelling & Grammar reports nothing to check even when the page is full of mistakes.

Why: in almost every case the text (or the document, or the style behind it) has the “Do not check spelling or grammar” flag set, or the proofing language assigned to that text is wrong, so Word skips it. Less often, proofing tools for the language aren’t installed. Work through these in order.

Fix 1: Clear “Do not check spelling or grammar”

This setting is applied to selected text, so check it with everything selected.

1. Press Ctrl + A to select the entire document.
2. Go to the Review tab, and in the Language group click Language > Set Proofing Language.
3. In the dialog, clear the “Do not check spelling or grammar” check box.
4. While you’re here, confirm the language at the top (e.g. English (United States)) matches what you’re actually typing, then click OK.

Word should immediately re-check the document and start underlining errors again.

Fix 2: Set the correct proofing language

If part of the document still isn’t checked, the wrong language may be applied to that text.

1. Select the affected text (or Ctrl + A for the whole document).
2. Review > Language > Set Proofing Language.
3. Choose the language you’re writing in from the list and click OK.
4. To stop it recurring, in the same dialog click Set As Default so new documents use that language.

Note that Word can only auto-detect languages listed above the double line in this dialog. If yours isn’t there, add it as an editing language first (Review > Language > Language Preferences), then it becomes available for automatic detection.

Fix 3: Re-enable the spelling checker globally

If spell check is dead in every document, the app-wide options may be off.

1. Go to File > Options > Proofing.
2. Under When correcting spelling and grammar in Word, tick Check spelling as you type and Mark grammar errors as you type.
3. Make sure Hide spelling errors in this document only and Hide grammar errors in this document only (further down, under Exceptions) are not ticked.
4. Click OK and retype a deliberate typo to confirm the squiggles return.

FAQ

Spell check works in new documents but not this one. That points to a setting baked into this file’s text or styles. Select all (Ctrl + A), open Review > Language > Set Proofing Language, and clear “Do not check spelling or grammar.” If it’s tied to a style, update the style’s language too.

Why does only some text get checked? Different paragraphs can carry different proofing languages — common when text is pasted from the web or another document. Select the skipped text and set its language explicitly.

I write in two languages — can Word handle both? Yes. Enable both editing languages under Language Preferences, and Word can detect each as long as a full sentence is in that language. Automatic detection needs enough text to identify the language.

Sources: Microsoft Support — Troubleshoot checking spelling and grammar in multiple languages