Is there a way to disable Word spell check selectively in-document?

You can define a character style whose only property is "Do not check spelling or grammar", and apply that style to any text you don't want checked.

Follow these steps:

• Select some character that has no special formatting.
• On the Review tab of the ribbon, click the Set Language button in the Proofing group (its icon is a globe and a page with a red check mark).
• In the dialog, check the box for "Do not check spelling or grammar" and click OK.
• On the Home tab of the ribbon, click the bottom one of the three arrow buttons at the right end of the Quick Styles gallery (the one with a line over a triangle) and choose Save Selection as a New Quick Style.
• In the box that pops up, click the Modify button.
• In the dialog, change the name to No Spelling or something similar, change the style type to Character, and select the "New documents based on this template" option at the bottom. Verify that the definition (below the preview) includes "Do not check spelling or grammar" and "Based on: Default Paragraph Font". Click OK.
• When you exit Word, if you're prompted to save changes to the Normal.dotm template, answer Yes.
  

Now, whenever you have text that you want the spell checker to ignore, select it and apply the No Spelling style to it. Its appearance won't change, but it will be ignored.

Jay has given you the steps you need, but this solution is also discussed at http://WordFAQs.mvps.org/MasterSpellCheck.htm#ExemptingText. You may find other portions of this article that will be helpful.

While both of these instructions have been helpful, what I had to do in order to get the basic functionality working was to open the Styles list and manage things from there.  

The functionality is very flakey to set up, and often when I thought I had it, the spell check would reappear and highlight my text ('No spellcheck' appearance would fail after working).  On the other hand, in the beginning it would indicate a 'No spellcheck' style but nothing would happen. 

After more than three hours working on this issue, and the problem cascade flowing from the problems using the Word 2007 ribbon, I can say without fear of contradiction that Word 2007 is a giant step backward for the productivity of experienced users like me.

The directive to apply to "New documents based on this template" is especially misleading because 1) it fails to note the name of the 'template' it is referring to, 2) where that template is located, and 3) it fails to mention how to apply this new style to older documents.

My understanding is that Word (at least the old version 2003) is different than Excel (as I recall) in that documents are created with the normal.dot template in existence at the time and that template is attached to that document as a static template.  When changes are made to the 'global' normal.dot, these changes are not reflected in existing documents.  This has been my understanding, and seems to be true here.  The new style 'No spellcheck' is not available to documents already created from an earlier normal.dot.

While I can Google/Bing this problem myself, and will, for the purposes of making this a complete thread, I would be grateful if one or both of you would indicate how this functionality/new style can be made available to all documents as a global style, not just for new documents.

-- Roy Zider

Your question about how to make the style available to existing documents has been answered in your other thread. To make a long story short, every existing document's style list is disconnected from the styles of the template used to create it, or of any other template you attach to it, unless you take some specific action for that specific document. For a more complete explanation, read http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/templates/templaterelations.html.

This is not something new in Word 2007 and has nothing to do with the ribbon. (That's a whole different kettle of smelly fish.)

Your question about how to make the style available to existing documents has been answered in your other thread.

 

No, it hasn't.   As I pointed out there (and here) this is not a global solution. And your answer repeats what I have stated above.

My comment about the ribbon relates to the difficulties introduced by the lack of a menu bar.  The care with which you had to craft your instruction, and the concentration required by the user to follow what are almost entirely steps in the navigation to settings, is what makes the ribbon virtually useless in comparison with describing navigation using an hierarchical menu (with clearly-noted keyboard shortcuts). 

If there is a ready-made global solution, I'd be very appreciative of hearing about it (other than writing my own macro or add-in).

 

-- Roy Zider

 

Any user coming to a new application is going to have problems with the transition. I am sure that most experienced users felt that the ribbon impaired their productivity when it was introduced and cursed Microsoft for its adoption. But if you are going to continue with Word then this is the way of the future. It takes a while to find your way around, but it then becomes second nature and you will wonder why you made such a fuss about it. Certainly I have no desire to go back to using Word 2003 (though I have it installed for support purposes).

Word 2010 provides rudimentary ribbon editing, but you can format the 2007 ribbon with a bit of effort to have it work the way you want it to - http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tip_pages/customize_ribbon_main.html

However if all you want to do is to flag some sections of text in a document as no proofing, Right click the status bar at the bottom of the Word window and ensure 'Language' is checked. That will put the language button on the status bar. Any text that you want to flag as no-proofing can easily be selected before clicking that language button and the no-proofing option selected from there.

As for the way styles and templates behave, that is the same in Word 2007 is it always has been.
You may however find it advantageous to locate the QAT (Quick Access Toolbar) below the ribbon and add to it the 'Styles ... ' and 'Style' commands to the QAT from the popular (or all commands) group of commands which will give you the styles drop down you are familiar with from earlier versions.

Graham:

Yes, agree with most of what you've said. However, in contrast to you I only use Word 2007 for support purposes -- I use Word 2003 to get work done.  It may well be that over time 2007/2010 results in increased productivity.  But in the meantime actual work has to get done. 

There are other threads which trash the design decisions that went into Word 2007.  I don't want to do that here.  But since you are clearly in the 2007 camp, perhaps you can explain in some way why 'Delete Table' is still not in the context menu?  It's even farther away from the user than it is in 2003.  But if you'd rather pass on this one, that's OK -- it's a diversion from the subject of this thread, and I am as big a critic as anyone of thread drift.

-- Roy Zider

 

 

I suspect that until ability to edit the context menus is restored (if it ever is), there are still going to be a lot of unhappy campers. I also still use Word 2003 for production work, though increasingly, as a result of having to use Word 2007/2010 for support purposes (and even for some contract work), I find myself occasionally wishing I were using Word 2010. What I can tell you that you may find helpful is that is is possible to edit the Word 2007/2010 context menus if you are very sneaky.

Start with Graham's "Toolbars in Word 2007" article. I discovered quite accidentally that, by virtue of creating an add-in to add toolbars to the QAT, I had also managed to import menu customizations. These affect only the context menus, but since most of my shortcut menu customizations have been in the Tables context menus, I was very pleased by this unexpected side-effect (one of the customizations I most rely on is the old-style Vertical Alignment submenu).

You'll need to save those customizations explicitly in your global add-in (not sure how I managed to do that, actually, unless I created the add-in as a copy of Normal.dot, which I'm pretty sure I didn't), and it may require some trial-and-error, but if I can do it without meaning to, it can't be that hard!

Suzanne:

Thank you for your comments (as well as your earlier link to your Exempting specific text from spell checking.  I'm pretty sure there are many of us spanning these two (or even three) generations of Microsoft Word.  I haven't gotten involved yet with Word 2010.  This can become a life's work.

I've printed out Graham's article and will read it outside today, in the sun on Sunday.

-- Roy

But since you are clearly in the 2007 camp, perhaps you can explain in some way why 'Delete Table' is still not in the context menu?

It was clearly an oversight. It has been restored there in Word 2010.

In the meantime you could add the Delete Table or the more useful Delete Rows command (which will delete a selected table) to the QAT
or
you may find http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tip_pages/customize_shortcut_menu.html useful.