Tip of the week # 573
28 May 2019


Check the spelling of all worksheets (Microsoft Excel) *

Excel's AutoCorrect feature corrects common spelling errors, such as accomodate and recieved, as you type. But - unlike in Outlook, Word and PowerPoint - it doesn't show potential spelling errors with a red squiggly line, so you might never spot that accomodation is misspelled.

Even worse ... by default, Excel only checks the spelling of your active sheet. But although it might prompt you to continue checking at the beginning of the sheet if you didn't have your cursor in cell A1 (CTRL + HOME, anyone?) it won't warn you to check the rest of your sheets. OK, right at the end it tells you the spelling check is complete for the entire sheet rather than for the workbook, but who would notice that?!

So you'll have to check the spelling of your text manually and you have to specifically tell it to check the spelling of all worksheets.

Here's how:

  1. Right-click any of your sheets and select Select All Sheets.
  2. Press F7. (Or click on the Spelling button in the Proofing group on the Review tab.)

As you most probably know, possible spelling errors are flagged up in a separate dialog box from where you select the appropriate action - Ignore, Add, Change or AutoCorrect. If you always misspell, say, accomodation I strongly recommend to click on AutoCorrect. This will replace the flagged entry (accomodation) with the entry that is selected or typed (accommodation) and adds the entry to the AutoCorrect dictionary. In short, in future it will always automatically change accomodation to accommodation.

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* Unless stated otherwise, these tips were written for Microsoft Office 2010.