Neither Excel is a word processing software, nor most of Excel users do care about spell checking in their workbooks. However, Excel does have a spell check feature even though it is not as powerful as Word or PowerPoint offers. In this guide, we’re going to show you how to spell check in Excel.
Spell checking in Excel
Excel's spell checking is a bit different than Word's. It does not underline the misspelled words or check grammar as you type. You need to run the feature manually unless aumated by VBA.
There are two ways to spell check in Excel:
- Press F7 key or
- Click Spelling in Review tab of the Ribbon
Once the key is pressed or icon is clicked, Excel shows the Spelling dialog if there are any misspelled words in a cell.
Use the buttons to ignore or correct the misspelling or add the word to the dictionary to not see the same warning again later.
If there are no misspelled word though, you will see a message box that confirms this.
How does spell check in Excel Work
Spell checking will be applied to cells according to selected cells:
- If the cell A1 is selected, Excel checks the entire worksheet.
- If a single cell is selected, Excel starts from the selected cell, and it will go through the cells to the right and down to the row below. When it finishes the worksheet, it shows a prompt that asks the user to continue checking at the beginning of the sheet.
- Let's say there are multiple cells selected. Excel checks only the selected cells and do not ask you to continue checking from the beginning.
- To check a specific cell only, either press F2 or double-click on that cell to enter the edit mode, and then initiate the spell check.
- If your intention is to check a part of the cell's contents, enter edit mode (or use the formula bar) to select the substring and then initiate the spell check.
