Word and Spell Checking Redux

In the last installment, I shared an uncommon issue with spell checking in Word documents. I also shared a solution, however unsavory and tedious it may be. To recap, from time to time one may run across documents in which proofing (spell and grammar checking) is disabled in certain pages, sections and/or paragraphs.

This may be overcome by marking the problem area and selecting "Clear All Formatting" under Styles and then reformatting. While I admit that this solution is not ideal, it is certainly better than reformatting the entire document.

My approach with to the problem was the same as my approach to any other. Once the problem is identified, find a solution quickly. This solution is not usually going to be easy to implement. However, it is always workable. Once that workable solution is discovered, pass it on to the users that need to use it. This is usually met with groans, but again, it is a solution.

Then, the real fun begins. Since the users have a workable solution, I can work on a solution that is more elegant, easier to perform and implement. In this case, a macro! That's right, a macro. It turns out that the macro solution for this particular problem is, well, really short. One line of code, in fact. Create a new macro called Enable_Proofing and add the code:

Sub Enable_Proofing()
'
' Enable_Proofing Macro
'

ActiveDocument.Content.NoProofing = False

End Sub

Simply add this macro to your Normal.dot template so that it will always be available. No style clearing or reformatting required. The macro simply removes all NoProofing flags from the active document.

I love it when a plan comes together!

Word and Spell Checking

I am currently working in an office environment that has ALOT of legacy documents. What do I mean by legacy? Well, I mean we have alot of documents that were created in older versions of Word and are still used and updated with new information. All of the legacy documents were created with Word for MAC OS 9. Yeah, you read it correctly... OS 9!

So, we have all these documents and they have been modified, folded, spindled and mutilated with various versions of Word on both OS 9 and Windows. This has led to some very interesting issues. (By interesting, I mean very annoying.)

The biggest problem we have is some parts of some documents are excluded from spell and grammar check. Now, I can do without the grammer check. But, I NEED the spell check! This is a major problem, because it is not the document as a whole that is excluded. Only certain portions of some of the documents. It could be a paragraph, a table, a section or even a page. But never the whole document. This makes things very difficult.

However dim it may be, there is a light at the end of this particular tunnel and you don't have to recreate the entire document. If you are having a similar problem there is a way to get rid of these codes that are in the document, but you do not have direct access to. Believe it or not, you can mark the text in question and choose "Clear Formatting" from the Styles drop-down and this will get rid of those nasty little invisible buggers!

Why not just change it to another Style directly? Well, you can. But, if you don't clear all formatting first, the coding for ignoring the spell and grammer checking will remain! So, clear the formatting and then reformat the text to the needs of the document.

So, armed with this new found knowledge, go forth and fix those legacy documents! Show them that you're the boss!