Just with a simple spell check in Excel, find out how to impress your teacher or boss with a flawless spreadsheet.

Microsoft Excel is a great tool when it comes to managing spreadsheets. But of course, while entering and analyzing so much data, it is very natural to slip in spelling errors.

All hours of toiling go to waste when your boss points out those misspelled words.

However, you can fix these typos with a spell check in Excel. Learn below how to correct the wrongly spelled words in your excel file. Also, learn how to combine columns in Excel here.

Spell Check in Excel Using the Review Tab

This method of correcting spelling errors in Microsoft Excel is similar to that in Microsoft Word.

Simply click on the Review tab above your worksheet.

The leftmost corner of the Review tab shows an option called ‘Spelling.’

Clicking on this option will initiate the Excel spell check. It happens as follows.

If there is any spelling error in the document, a Spell Check dialog box appears.

It shows the wrong spelling. A spelling is assumed to be incorrect if it is not present in the custom dictionary of Microsoft Excel.

You shall have several options to work on this word. These are elaborated below:

1. Ignore Once: It ignores words for the first instance of its occurrence. Click Ignore to use this option.
2. Ignore All: It ignores all the instances of the spelling error. Click Ignore All to use this option.
3. Add to Dictionary language: It adds the detected word to the Excel dictionary language, and thus, the spelling is considered correct.
4. Suggestions: This tab displays a list of correct words similar to the misspelled word. You can select any of these and change the spelling errors using the ‘Change’ options discussed below.
5. Change: The wrong spelling is replaced by any word selected in suggestions. If no word is selected, then you can type the correct word yourself in the bar. Note that only the current instance of the misspelled word is replaced with the correct word.
6. Change All: What if there are repeated words with spelling errors and you detect one of them? Then just by correcting any one of them, get rid of all the cells that contain the misspelled words. Click Change All to replace all the repeated misspelled words.
7. Autocorrect: This is a very sophisticated feature by Microsoft Excel spell check. It replaced the spelling error with the selected suggestion from the list for that particular cell. Then next time you type the misspelled words, those are automatically replaced with the Selected Suggestion. Just click autocorrect to use this option.
8. Dictionary language: You can change the dictionary language by using this option.
9. Undo Last: After clicking on this option, the previous spell check operation is undone.

There is also another button called Options to manipulate using the advanced capabilities. You can check advanced settings by choosing this option. A new dialog box appears. These options appear under Proofing Group and are as follows:

1. Autocorrect Options: This option provides many functionalities, including Grammar checking. Some of the corrections are as follows. These options are pretty self-explanatory.
   1. Show autocorrect options button.
   2. Correct two initial capitals.
   3. Capitalize the first letter of sentences.
   4. Capitalize names of days.
   5. Fix the accidently used caps lock key.
   6. Replace text as you type.
2. You can also select these checkboxes. Effects, when checked in the respective box, are as follows.
   1. Ignores words in UPPERCASE
   2. Ignores words that contain a number.
   3. Ignore Internet links.
   4. Enforce accented uppercase in French.
   5. Suggesting from the Main dictionary only. Below this option, you can also customize the dictionary by pressing the Custom Dictionary button.
   6. French mode selection.
   7. Spanish mode selection.
   8. Selection of the Dictionary language
3. You can use any of these options according to your requirements and click OK to save the settings. Otherwise, click Cancel.
4. After this, you return to the initial Spelling dialog box. You can continue to spell check using this dialog box as follows.
5. This dialog box opens when an error is caught. 
6. After correcting that error, the spell checker jumps to the subsequent spelling errors.
7. If you do not wish to continue checking, you can close the Spell Check option by clicking close to stop the spell checking.
8. Otherwise, the spell checking is continued till the end of the worksheet until it becomes error-free.
9. In the end, the spelling dialog box disappears, and a new dialog box appears that mentions that the spell check is complete.

It should also be noted that the spelling checker starts to check spelling errors from the cell you have clicked. For example, if you click on a single cell B3, the spell checking initiates from this cell. In some versions, the user can choose whether he wishes to run a spell check from the beginning or not.

Keyboard Shortcut for Spell Checking in Excel

By clicking, F7 too, you can initiate the above-mentioned Spell Check in Excel. It also obeys the location rule of the cell, just like shown in the above example.

Spell Check in Excel for a Single Cell or Multiple Cells

When you single click on a cell and then start spell checking, the spell check initiates from that particular cell. So this cell is the starting point for your Spell Check in Excel.

But what if you wish to spell check only a few individual cells or a group of cells?

Double click on the Excel cell you want to perform the spell check. It will select the cell in edit mode, and then you can initiate the spell check by using any of the methods mentioned above. It will perform a spell check only on the selected cell and the entire worksheet. Errors in the other cells remain unreported.

Similarly, instead of selecting a single cell, you can determine a range of cells as mentioned above to carry out spell checking only on the contents of those cells in Excel. This spell check is just like the one in MS Word.

How to Spell Check in Excel for Multiple Sheets

With any of the above-mentioned methods, you can easily run a spell check for the active sheet. But is it possible to do so for multiple sheets?

Yes, it is! You can run spell check in Excel for more than one worksheet using the Spelling option or keyboard shortcut.

You can see the worksheets in the entire workbook in the Excel ribbon below the current worksheet. Press and hold the Ctrl key and select the worksheets you wish to carry out the spell check on in Excel.

Then press F7 or select the Spelling option from the proofing group of the Review tab to run spell check on the selected worksheets.

How to Spell Check in Excel the Entire Workbook

You use the basic spell checking functionality for the entire workbook. All you need to do is to select all the worksheets while implementing the above technique. Then a spelling dialog box will appear and run a spell check on all the worksheets present in the workbook.

Find out more about how to spell check in Excel by visiting the given video. It explains all the methods of spell check in excel, so your worksheet is flawless, and your boss gets impressed, while hours of your proofreading job is condensed to just a few minutes!!!

Spell Check in Excel: Default Settings

You should know how will the above spell checks be carried out with the default settings as follows:

1. This spell check ignores any internet address or file addresses present in the document and will not consider them to be an error word.
2. Immediately- repeated words in the same sentence are flagged as an error.
3. Any word in the uppercase will not be considered for the spell check in Excel because such words are generally abbreviations.
4. Any word which is an alphanumeric string will be ignored too.

When does the Spell Check Fail to Work in Excel

It should be noted that if the document is protected, then you need to bring it unprotected mode first to spell-check in Excel. Also, ensure that the Edit mode is enabled, without which it does not work.

Summary 

Microsoft Excel provides numerous tools to keep your work error-free and grammatically correct. There is an extensive range of functions and techniques in Excel. You can also add to custom dictionaries, so you get a better experience.

In multiple ways, it is possible to scan the worksheet for errors without manual inspection of every cell. Thus, time is managed efficientl,y and the quality of the work is also taken care of. So next time you have that long spreadsheet to present, use these easy techniques to impress the audience!

Also read: How to Lock Apps on Android

Last Updated on December 27, 2022 by Laveleena Sharma