How to Spell Check in Excel?

In excel we don’t write text in sentences or paragraph. The main motive of using excel is to store data or information in tabular form so there is not much need for spell check in excel. Sometimes people even forget to check spellings in excel.

The spell check in excel is not similar to spell check of MS Word. Excel never highlight the incorrect spelling by underlining it with the red wavy underline. Excel does not even go for grammar checking. But, it still provides a basic spelling checking facility for the users.

In this section, we will discuss the steps for checking spellings of a sheet in excel. We will also study the method to check the spelling of a particular cell or a specified range of cells.

Steps to Spell Check in Excel 2016:

Step 1: Open the Excel worksheet and click on the ‘first’ cell of your sheet.

Step 2: Go to the Review tab and under Proofing group click on ‘ABC Spelling‘.

Step 3: As soon as you click on ‘ABC Spelling’, a Spelling dialog box will pop up and the ‘first misspelt word’ of the worksheet will get selected automatically.

The first text box (Not in Dictionary) of the Spelling dialog box shows the misspelt word of the selected cell. Like in the image below, you can observe that the selected cell has two words ‘Sweet Ornges’ among which only the spelling of ‘Ornges’ is misspelt. So, ‘Not in Dictionary’ text box only shows ‘Ornges’.

In the ‘Suggestions’ section of the Spelling dialog box, some correct spellings are suggested for the misspelt word.

You can change the spelling by clicking on the ‘Change’ button.

Well, there several buttons in the Spelling dialog box let us discuss them all at once:

Ignore Once: Using this button you can ignore the currently selected misspelt word.

Ignore All: Using this button you can ignore all the misspelt words which are exactly same as the currently selected misspelt word.

Add to Dictionary: Using this button you can add the currently selected misspelt word to the dictionary. This will avoid considering it again as a misspelt word.

Change: For using this button, first select the correct spelling according to you from the Suggestions section, and using this button you can replace the currently selected misspelt word to the correct one.

Change All: First, select the correct spelling from the suggestions section and using this button you can replace all the misspelt word which are exactly same as the currently selected misspelt word.

AutoCorrect: Using this button you allow excel to correct the spelling on its own.

Options: This button leads you to the spell check setting section.

Undo Last: Using this button you can reverse your last move.

Cancel: Using this button you can stop the Spell check process.

After the correction of the first misspelt word Spelling dialog box will take to the ‘next misspelt word’ of the sheet. Like in the image below, the next selected misspelt word is ‘Licchis’.

After correcting misspelt word ‘Licchis’ the next selected misspelt word is ‘Grpes’. Like this, after every correction, the next misspelt word would be selected until all the misspelt words are processed.

After the process of spell check is done for the entire sheet a Microsoft Excel dialog box will pop up delivering the message ‘Spell check complete. You’re good to go!’ Click OK to finish spell check.

Note: If you don’t want to investigate the entire worksheet for spell check and want to check only a particular cell, or a range of cell for spelling then:

Particular Cell: Click on the particular cell and initiate the Spell check.

Range of Cells: Select the range of cells for which you want to run spell-check and then initiate the process of spell-check.

So, this was all about the process of spell check in Excel. Hope the content is useful. Keep reading.