Disabling or Hiding Automatic Spelling and Grammar Checking

Automatic spelling and grammar checking isn't everyone's cup of tea. Many people appreciate the way it catches typos and other inadvertent errors as they make them?without going through the trouble of a formal spelling or grammar check. Others find it distracting and want to turn it off immediately?especially the grammar checker, which has improved but is still far from perfect. Automatic spelling and grammar checking also slows down Word slightly.

If you prefer not to use automatic spell checking or automatic grammar checking, you can easily turn off one or both of them. Choose Tools, Options, and click the Spelling & Grammar tab in the dialog box that appears. Then, to disable automatic spell checking, clear the Check Spelling as You Type check box. To disable automatic grammar checking, clear the Check Grammar as You Type check box. When you're finished, click OK and your document is now free of red and green wavy lines.

Another option is to enable Word to keep checking the document but prevent it from displaying the potential problems with red or green wavy underlines.

You can also do this from the Spelling & Grammar tab of the Options dialog box. Check the boxes Hide Spelling Errors in This Document and Hide Grammatical Errors in This Document. The result will be a less cluttered-looking document?but because Word is still checking your document in the background, you won't gain much performance.

Later, when you check the document's spelling or grammar using the Spelling and Grammar dialog box, the process goes faster because Word has already found the potential errors. Or, when you're ready, you can clear these check boxes and fix all your potential errors at once from within the document.