In this case, after checking everything else, the 'buried' setting was found. To reveal a 'buried' setting, hit SHIFT+F1 to reveal formatting.

In my case, what probably happened is that the setting was turned off somewhere at some point, and the setting was just buried. By selecting the entire document, you can reveal settings for headers and footers. Make sure the proper language is selected, and the check box that says ' Do not check spelling or grammar' is NOT checked. Hit ' Control A' to select the entire document, and then go to ' Review' / 'Language'. It appeared that my settings were correct, but the spell checking didn't work by default.Īfter looking further I found the problem was that the language wasn't selected. In my case, this was turned on already so this wasn't the problem. There is a check box to enable ' Check spelling as you type'. To check this, go to the ' File' tab and select the ' Options' button and then select ' Proofing'. The first thing I checked is to confirm that the automatic checking feature wasn't turned off by mistake. Given that I have relied on a spell checker for years, I decided this process was risky and I finally took the time to figure out what was going on.

However, each time I opened WORD to create a new document, the spell checker would be off by default and I would have to remember to turn it on manually again. This worked fine, and as long as I kept the document open, the spell checking would continue to work. I noticed a few misspellings and wondered why they weren't caught with the red squiggly line under the word automatically, and then I started getting in the habit of going to the ' Review Tab' and selecting the ' Spelling and Grammar' button to review the document.

I encountered annoying problem recently: my spell checker in Microsoft WORD disappeared.

Microsoft word 2016 grammar check