Word 2010: Spelling & Grammar Options (Part I)

Many people are unaware that Word 2010 is configured not to spell-check upper-case words. This odd default setting tripped up a user at a San Francisco law firm where I was helping on an Office 2010 rollout this summer.  He had run a spell-check and was puzzled that the program didn’t flag an obviously misspelled word.  Sure enough, the word was typed in upper case, and it hadn’t occurred to the user (or a rather inexperienced trainer who had stopped by his desk earlier) to check the spelling options.

To change this setting, click the File tab > Options, and click to highlight / select the Proofing category.  Under Proofing, toward the top, you’ll see “When correcting spelling in Microsoft office programs.”  The first option is “Ignore words in UPPERCASE.”  If that option is checked — which it is by default, although your firm’s IT people might have unchecked it for you — uncheck it, then click the “OK” button at the bottom right corner of the Word Options dialog to save your changes.  (Be sure to click “OK” whenever you change a setting.  If you close the Word Options dialog by clicking the red “X” in the upper right corner, Word will not save your changes!)

There are other useful spelling and grammar options under Proofing; I will write about those settings later on in a separate post.

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