We can perform spell check in Excel even though MS Excel does not come with certain advanced capabilities such as grammar checking and correction. Upon completing the excel spell check, a prompt shows up notifying the checker of its successful completion. This tutorial will walk all levels of Excel users on how to use spell check.
Figure 1 – How to perform Spelling Check on Excel and Google Spreadsheet
How to perform Spell Check on a single sheet
We can perform a spelling check on the active worksheet by following the steps below:
1. We will select the cells we wish to check spellings on. In our case, we select A4:A11
Figure 2 – Highlight the cells to check spellings
2. Click on the Review tab, and on the first ribbon, select Spelling.
Figure 3 – Select Spelling from the Review tab
3. The excel spell check is done automatically, and a dialog box prompts a “success” notification if all the spellings were correct.
Figure 4 – A prompt with a “success” notification
4. The prompt will be different if the spellings on the sheet (within the selected cells) are wrong.
Figure 5 – The prompt that appears in the case that there are wrong spellings
5. To effect the corrections suggested in the prompt, select the appropriate option among the suggestions, and click on the Change button. The spellings will be immediately corrected. Continue for all the detected spelling errors until they are exhausted.
Figure 6 – After changing all the wrong spellings in the sheet, a sheet free of typos results
It could be that the mistake excel has detected was a deliberate action on our part. In that case, we will select Ignore Once if it’s one case or Ignore All if we want excel to ignore all the “mistakes”. The following are some of the functionalities we can get from the dialog prompt:
- Click Ignore Once to ignore the current mistake.
- Click Ignore All to ignore all the mistakes detected.
- Click Add to Dictionary to add the current word to dictionary. This word will not be considered as a mistake subsequently when a spell check is done.
- Click Change All to replace all the mistakes as well as the current one with the suggested options.
- Click AutoCorrect to give excel permission to correct the mistakes based on recommended settings.
- Click the Options button to view or change the spell check settings.
- Click the Cancel button to terminate the spell check process and close the prompt.
How to perform Spell Check on Multiple sheets
We can check spelling in excel for multiple sheets by following the steps below:
1. We will select the sheets we wish to check spellings on by holding Ctrl button and clicking on the sheet names. In our case, we will select Cluster-KW reference, Sheet1, and Sheet2.
Figure 7 – Select the sheets to check spellings on
2. Click on the Review tab, and on the first ribbon, select Spelling.
Figure 8 – Select Spelling from the Review tab
3. The spell check is done automatically, and a dialog box prompts a “success” notification if all the spellings were correct.
Figure 9 – A prompt with a “success” notification
4. The prompt will be different if the spellings on any of the sheets are wrong.
Figure 10 – The prompt that appears in the case that there are wrong spellings
5. To effect the corrections suggested in the prompt, select the appropriate option among the suggestions, and click on the Change button. The spellings will be immediately corrected. Continue for all the detected spelling errors until they are exhausted.
Figure 11 – After changing all the wrong spellings in the selected sheets
6. We right click on one of the sheet names and select Ungroup sheets.
How to perform Spell Check on an entire Workbook
Here, we will look at how to do spell check on an entire workbook.
1. To do the spell check on the entire workbook, we will right click on a sheet name, and click on Select All Sheets.
Figure 12 – Right click on a sheet name and click on Select All Sheets.
2. Click on the Review tab, and on the first ribbon, select Spelling.
Figure 13 – Select Spelling from the Review tab
3. The spell check is done automatically, and a dialog box prompts a “success” notification if all the spellings were correct.
Figure 14 – A prompt with a “success” notification
4. The prompt will be different if the spellings on any of the sheets are wrong.
Figure 15 – The prompt that appears in the case that there are incorrect spellings
5. To effect the corrections suggested in the prompt, select the appropriate option among the suggestions, and click on the Change button. The spellings will be immediately corrected. Continue for all the detected spelling errors until they are exhausted.
Figure 16 – After changing all the wrong spellings in the selected sheets.
6. We right click on one of the sheet names and select Ungroup sheets.
PS: Note that the Excel spell-checking functionality is quite limited, unlike MS Word, it does not underline misspelled words automatically. One only gets to see and correct wrong spellings in excel when the spell check button is clicked.
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