Office 2003 and 2007 Word ignores certain spelling errors

[Tim Mackey]

I checked both versions (2003 and 2007) of Office Word to see if they
recognized specific spelling errors. Spell checker seems to ignore any word
that has certain characters embedded, like any number (0-9), asterisk,
parenthesis, right brace, backslash, or left-arrow (shift apostrophe). When
I'm banging along and I unintentionally hit a numeric key within a word,
spell checker doesn't recognize the error. Why? Is there a fix for this?

 

[Jay Freedman]

There's an option (in Word 2003, Tools > Options > Spelling & Grammar;
in Word 2007, Office button > Word Options > Proofing) for "Ignore
words with numbers" that prevents recognition of something like
"Off9ce" from being recognized as an error. That option is checked by
default but you can uncheck it.

The other characters you mentioned are considered to be word-ending
punctuation, so if the sequences to the left and right of one of those
characters form correctly spelled words, the spell checker won't mark
anything. Otherwise, it should flag at least one part of the word as
misspelled. There is no option you can change as in the case of
digits. If you find that you make the same mistake repeatedly, you can
put it into the AutoCorrect list
(http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/AutoCorrect.htm).

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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On Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:24:01 -0700, Tim Mackey <Tim

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

For numbers, in Word 2007, check Word Options - Proofing, and remove the
check next to "Ignore words that contain numbers". (I believe there's a
corresponding setting in Word 2003, but I don't recall where offhand).

For the others you mentioned, if I insert one in a word (asterisk,
parentheses, apostrophe), Word treats the before/after components as
separate words, and I get spelling error underlining for the components
unless they actually are words. For example, if I type "exam*ple", the exam
portion is not flagged, but the ple portion is. If I type "exa(mple", both
components are flagged. In any case, the odds are good that my attention is
going to be called to the error.