4 Spelling Tips Every Manager Should Know

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I don’t need to remind you that clean, polished correspondence is important. You’re a manager, after all. Here’s a rundown of some recent PC Helps e-tips that will ensure you churn out error-free copy, no matter the medium.

Manually Check Spelling in Office Apps
If you composed your document without turning on automatic spell checking, or if automatic spell checking is not an option, you can check spelling whenever you wish. The steps are nearly identical in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, Visio and Project.

Press the F7 key on your keyboard for an even easier way to the start the Spell Checker.

1. Click on the Tools menu (Office 2007: Review tab), and select Spelling or Spelling and Grammar.
2. The Spelling dialog box opens with the first error highlighted.
3. If the word is correct, click either the Ignore Once or the Ignore All button.
4. If the word is incorrect, select the correct word from the Suggestions area and then click the Change button.
5. Repeat until all errors have been corrected.
6. A message box will pop-up telling you the spelling check is complete. Click OK.

Shortcut:
Office 2000, 2002, 2003 and Project 2007, Publisher 2007 and Visio 2007. Press the F7 key on your keyboard for an even easier way to the start the Spell Checker. The Spelling Dialog box will appear, continue with Step 3 if there are errors. (Russell Hatton & Mary Hazel McDermott)

Automatically Check Spelling

If you often forget to check your spelling manually, you may need to turn it to automatic. Here’s how:

Word 2000, 2002, 2003

1. Click on the Tools menu and click Options.
2. Click on the Spelling & Grammar tab in the Options dialog box.
3. In the Spelling area, select or deselect the “Check Spelling as You Type” checkbox to turn the spelling checker on or off.
4. Check the “Always suggest corrections” check box if it is not checked.
5. In the Grammar area, select or deselect the “Check Grammar as You Type” checkbox to turn the grammar checker on or off.
6. Click the OK button.

Word 2007

1. Click on the Office button and choose Word Options.
2. Click on the Proofing category of the Word Options dialog box.
3. In the “When correct spelling and grammar in Word” area, check the following boxes to turn on spelling checker or clear them to turn it off: Check spelling as you type, Use contextual spelling, and Check grammar with spelling.
4. Click the OK button.

Remember, Spell Check should not take the place of good, old-fashioned proofing. You’ll get the tidiest text if you use both. (Mary Hazel McDermott)

Proof BlackBerry Messages Before You Hit Send
You can use Spell Check to check words in editable text fields (e-mail, text, pin, memopad, etc.). The words are checked against an internal dictionary and a custom dictionary on the BlackBerry.

To locate the spell checking options on your BlackBerry, go into Options (or Settings and then Options) and select Spell Check. From here, you can enable automatic spell checking of e-mail messages before they are sent.

If you want to manually spell check an e-mail message or any other editable text field, just click your menu button/track wheel and select Check Spelling.

When an unrecognized word is found, Spell Check displays a list of suggested words. You can then choose from a number of options:

• Select an alternate word.
• Ignore the word once.
• Ignore the word in all instances in the text field.
• Add the word to your custom dictionary.
• Cancel Spell Check.

The Spell Checker supports English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

Note: If your BlackBerry has Device Software 4.6, you can enable an option called “Check Spelling As You Type,” located in the Spell Check section of Options. This option underlines unrecognized words as you type. When you click on an underlined word, a list of suggested words appears. You can then change or ignore the word, or add it to your custom dictionary.

Spell Checker is not available with BlackBerry Device Software 4.2.1 or earlier. (Joel Reeves)

Create a Dictionary Exclusion List for Word
Are there certain words that you want to review every time they are used in a document even though they are in the dictionary? Word can flag these for you in your documents by marking them as misspelled. Identify your “always check” words by adding them to the Exclusion List.

Word 2000, 2002, 2003

1. Create a Text Only file (.txt) in Notepad. To do this go to Start | Programs | Accessories | Notepad.
2. Type each word on a separate line, by pressing enter after each word. Do not use any capital letters.
3. Click on the File menu and choose Save As.
4. Change the Save In location to: C:Documents and Settings<username>Application DataMicrosoftProof, where <username> is your user name.
5. Name the file Mssp2en.exc for an English exclusion file.
6. Change the Save As type to All Files and make sure the file the extension is .exc. This will add it to the dictionary list.
7. Click the Save button and close the file.
8. Accept the defaults if you are prompted for conversion information.
9. Close and reopen the Word application for the change to take effect.

The file must be saved in the Proof folder and named correctly for the exclusion list to work.

Word 2007

1. Locate the exclusion dictionary for the language you want to edit. The English exclusion file will be named ExcludeDictionaryEN0409.lex. The file should be found in the following location: C:Document and Settings<username>Application DataMicrosoftUProof. (If you use Vista the file is in this location: C:Users<username>AppDataMicrosoftUProof.
2. Right-click the file, choose Open With, click on “Select the program from a list” in the dialog box, and click OK. When prompted, choose to open the file with Notepad.
3. Enter the words that you would like the spell checker to mark as misspelled. Type in all lowercase and press enter after each word.
4. Click on the File menu and click Save.
5. Close the file.
6. Close and reopen the Word Application for the change to take effect.

The file must be in the UProof folder and named correctly for the exclusion list to work. Word 2007 creates the file automatically the first time the Spell Checker is used for a particular language. (Colleen Vencus)

Have any indispensable tips or tricks? Send them our way.

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