MS Word Spell Check Highlighting Problem

[Pete B]

I have a customer who is trying to use MS Word XP for composing a
book-length document. He is having a problem with the spellcheck function
in Word. Whenever he writes, he continues typing without stopping to
correct every spelling or grammar error that Word detects and highlights for
him to take action, he prefers to correct all errors in one final pass
through the document when he is finished working on it.

The problem he is having is that, when he reaches a certain "threshold" of
accumulated pending corrections, Word simply shuts off the spell checking
function and does not do any furtther highlighting of errors or anything.
He gets an error message similar to the following: "there are too many
spelling or grammatical errors".

He is forced to break up his work into small documents, but for him this is
very cumbersome. Being a recent convert from Lotus products, naturally he
is very upset claiming he never had the problem with that product. I have
searched and found nothing about this in the MSKB, but I did find a few
third-party forums that mention the same problem:

http://www.proz.com/topic/39623
http://www.mcse.ms/message1550491.html

Does anyone have any information, fixes, or workarounds for this? It
appears to be an undocumented error, or else MS just does not want to
acknowledge the problem, but it is very serious for this person.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Why not simply turn off Check Spelling as You Type, and do it all in one
fell swoop at the end, by pressing F7?

I prefer to deal with spelling errors as they occur, since for really
egregious errors, I might completely forget a point I was trying to make,
and hence what word I was trying to use. But, if I were going to save
spell-checking until the end, I certainly wouldn't want all of those red
squiggly lines distracting me in the meantime. They're just one more thing
for Word to keep track of, and one more thing to slow Word down.

Those points aside, it generally IS a good idea to break up larger works
into multiple documents. Not only does that make working with (opening,
saving, scrolling, etc.) the components faster, but it reduces the
probability of document corruption as well.

Note: I've never worked with Lotus products, so I can't compare Word with
them. All I can tell you is how to get along with Word, and how to reduce
the risk of losing work. If the customer prefers the way Lotus products
work, then that begs a certain question I'm too polite to ask. ;-)

 

[Pete B]

Turning off spellcheck is exactly what the customer does while he is
composing the document (but it also happens when he does it as he goes, it
is simply a matter of how many errors are detected). He prefers to do the
corrections as the last step, so that he will not have to repeat similar
errors every time they occur. The problem occurs when he tries to spell
check at the finish, that is what causes it. This is a book-length
manuscript, and he finds it very inconvenient to break it up treat each
session as a separate document. The problem occurs wheneever too many
errors accumulate, that is why I am seeking help.

I really do not understand why it should make any difference at all when he
does the spell check nor what the size of the document is. Have you heard
of this problem before, and is there any fix you are aware of? It took me
several years to convince this guy to go with MS Word, and now he is ready
to toss it and go back to Wordperfect or Lotus Notes for his work. I would
apprecia6te any help I can offer him.

--
Pete B

Why not simply turn off Check Spelling as You Type, and do it all in one
fell swoop at the end, by pressing F7?

I prefer to deal with spelling errors as they occur, since for really
egregious errors, I might completely forget a point I was trying to make,
and hence what word I was trying to use. But, if I were going to save
spell-checking until the end, I certainly wouldn't want all of those red
squiggly lines distracting me in the meantime. They're just one more thing
for Word to keep track of, and one more thing to slow Word down.

Those points aside, it generally IS a good idea to break up larger works
into multiple documents. Not only does that make working with (opening,
saving, scrolling, etc.) the components faster, but it reduces the
probability of document corruption as well.

Note: I've never worked with Lotus products, so I can't compare Word with
them. All I can tell you is how to get along with Word, and how to reduce
the risk of losing work. If the customer prefers the way Lotus products
work, then that begs a certain question I'm too polite to ask. ;-)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If the problem is just poor spelling, then I think the customer would be
better advised to use "Check spelling as you type" and correct the errors as
he goes. But if the problem is correctly spelled words not being recognized
by Word, then the solution would be to either add them to the custom
dictionary or format them as "Do not check spelling or grammar." The latter
is easily done by creating a character style, based on Default Paragraph
Font, that adds on the the "Do not check spelling or grammar" property.

Turning off spellcheck is exactly what the customer does while he is
composing the document (but it also happens when he does it as he goes, it
is simply a matter of how many errors are detected). He prefers to do the
corrections as the last step, so that he will not have to repeat similar
errors every time they occur. The problem occurs when he tries to spell
check at the finish, that is what causes it. This is a book-length
manuscript, and he finds it very inconvenient to break it up treat each
session as a separate document. The problem occurs wheneever too many
errors accumulate, that is why I am seeking help.

I really do not understand why it should make any difference at all when he
does the spell check nor what the size of the document is. Have you heard
of this problem before, and is there any fix you are aware of? It took me
several years to convince this guy to go with MS Word, and now he is ready
to toss it and go back to Wordperfect or Lotus Notes for his work. I would
apprecia6te any help I can offer him.

 

[Pete B]

The problem is NOT poor spelling, it is simply that, like myself, this
customer is not the world's greatest typist, so he frequently mistypes a
word. The problem is also NOT that Word does not recognize these mistakes
because they are in the dictionary, to the contrary it recognizes a certain
number of them but then just stops checking any farther when it has reached
some kind of arbitrary limit.

Not checking the spelling at all rather defeats the purpose of having a
spell check function, so that is also not a solution. Also, as I noted at
the beginning, the customer does not want to "check as he goes", he prefers
to continue typing and wait until his editing session is done before he
makes corrections; he wants to make all the corrections at once, rather
than continually interrupt his work as he types. This is the same way I
work, because like him I would be stopping every other sentence to correct
mistakes if I were to do it continually as I work.

Telling a customer to change his work habits to accomodate a defect in a
product (if that is what this is) is not my ordinary business practice
unless I have no other option, because to me that essentially is the same as
telling him it is a bug and there is no fix, so live with it. He purchased
the product in order to continue doing what he has always done for years
with other word processor products, which have never had such a problem.
What I am seeking here is a fix for the apparent problem with the product,
in order that he may work in the manner he is accustomed after many years.
If you are telling me that this is a product defect for which there is no
fix nor software patch or correction, then I will do so but I will clearly
identify to him the source of the problem as being a product defect, because
he may want to exchange his software for a non-MS package. I do not want to
do this, and I am sure MS does not want an unhappy customer over this
either.

Since you appear to be a recognized MS "authority" on this product, I will
ask you flat out whether there is any way to correct this problem with the
MS Word software that is transparent to the user or nearly so. This
gentleman is a very prolific writer, and would not take kindly to limiting
or altering his work habits of many years past to accomodate what he
considers to be a serious defect in the product, since non-MS word
processors have no such defect. At the very least, this problem should
certainly be taken under consideration for future correction by MS if there
is no fix, and as such it would certainly warrant an immediate MSKB article
expressing that fact; at least then I could show him something that
indicates concern. As the links I posted show, he is not the only person
having this problem.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Well, I would lump poor typing in with poor spelling as being for all
practical purposes the same in this instance, but I see your point. I think
this may be a resources issue: that is, very likely adding more RAM to the
computer would make a difference. Generally speaking, when Word shuts down a
function (suppressing spell checking, for example, or showing picture
placeholders), it's because resources are taxed to the point where the user
would be even more frustrated by poor performance. But this would apply
primarily to "Check spelling as you type." I can't imagine a situation where
Word would refuse to spell check a document explicitly, and this suggests to
me that something more is going wrong (possible document corruption,
perhaps?).

I am NOT an authority on Word's proofing tools; to get an answer from those
who are, I suggest you post in the microsoft.public.word.spelling.grammar
newsgroup.

I would also suggest that, if the user's typing errors are consistent, he
consider adding at least some of the corrections as AutoCorrect entries
(some may already be in there). I've long since given up hope of ever typing
some words correctly, and since I inevitably mistype them the same way, it's
easier just to have Word perform the correction for me. AutoCorrect is also
a tremendous boon to avoid typing of long strings of words that appear
repeatedly in a document; see
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/customization/AutoCorrect.htm.

Pace Herb, I would definitely *not* advise breaking the document up.

 

[Pete B]

Thanks, Susan, and I apologize if my comments seemed abrupt or rude, please
mark it up to frustration as I have been chasing this problem for quite
awhile now with no success. I will check about the RAM available, if that
would help I will propose it as a solution that should be tried. It
certainly sounds reasonable that Word would make the choice to limit the
function rather than degrade performance. I will also mention the
Autocorrect functionality you discuss, but I think that may not be much help
in this particular case. Lastly, I guess I missed that newsgroup you
mention, I will look again; had I seen it, I would certainly have tried it
first, and maybe that will bear fruit.

BTW I may have not made it clear, Word does not ever refuse to do a spell
check at all, it just shuts down before completing the task when this
overload is present; IOW it does proof a "small" portion of the document
and then will not check any further if there are too many errors detected.
So it may very well be a resources problem as you say

Thanks to both of you for the replies and advice. I will see what the
customer says..

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Those accessing this NG through the Office Communities will not find the
spelling.grammar NG; it's necessary to access the Communities through
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/list/en-us/default.aspx,
which lists *all* the groups. From your header, however, I see you are using
Outlook Express. If your ISP's news server does not carry all the Microsoft
NGs, you can access them directly via news://msnews.microsoft.com/. For more
on this, see http://www.insideoutlookexpress.com/resources/communities.htm
(or just click on
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.word.spelling.grammar to go
directly there). I no longer read that NG, so I don't know how much traffic
it has (especially since it's not linked from the more popular Communities
pages), but in the past, at least, it was monitored by those who are really
knowledgeable about these subjects.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

When you say that it's a book length manuscript, that suggests to me that
it's a large document. How big is it? Does it contain non-text elements
(e.g., tables, numbered lists, graphics, equations, etc.) that might
additionally be taxing Word's resources.

When I suggest breaking the document up, I do that based on years of
experience with very large documents -- some exceeding 50MB and contains
numerous graphics, equations, etc. Once documents get very large, they can
become unstable, and Word can become unable to handle them. So, it was in
that context that I was suggesting that breaking the document up might be a
way to manage the problem.

 

[Pete B]

I do have the group available from my ISP, I just was not subscribed to that
particular list, I missed seeing it is all. You are right, it does not have
much traffic. If necessary, I will post there, but seeing what is there
leads me to belive that you folks on this list are the more lnowledgable
ones to consult.

I spoke with the customer. He says he does not really have that many
errors, and he does use spell check as he works continually, rather than
waiting to the end. He uses WinXP Pro on a system with 1G of RAM, and he
did say he often works with other windows open for other applications. I
suggested to him that 1G is only barely minimal for WinXP (speaking
pragmatically) let alone with Word and other apps running as well, so I
suggested he get more RAM memory.

I know the type of work he does, and it is very likely that a lot of it is
graphics-intensive and also mathematica- and language-intensive specialty
content as well. I also suggested that, when he encounters this problem
again, he try immediately saving a test copy of the document, then close
down his system, reboot, and start only MS Word, nothing else, load the test
document, and see if he notices a difference. But I told him that it may
not make any difference, but it would be worth a try to see if memory
resources are the problem.

He is going to keep me posted and will himself check to see oif he can find
anything else unusual about the problem. Thanks for the help, we'll see how
it goes.

 

[Pete B]

I do not know for sure, but I am sure it is sizable. Knowing this gentleman
as I do, it is highly technical in nature, so it likely uses a lot of
graphics, special fonts, math symbols, science graphs, etc. Memory may very
well be a problem, see my other post this morning. He is strongly opposed
to breaking up the document, though, so I will leave that suggestion alone
for now, although I agree it might help.

Thanks, I will be back if anything else is found that might help.
--
Pete B

When you say that it's a book length manuscript, that suggests to me that
it's a large document. How big is it? Does it contain non-text elements
(e.g., tables, numbered lists, graphics, equations, etc.) that might
additionally be taxing Word's resources.

When I suggest breaking the document up, I do that based on years of
experience with very large documents -- some exceeding 50MB and contains
numerous graphics, equations, etc. Once documents get very large, they can
become unstable, and Word can become unable to handle them. So, it was in
that context that I was suggesting that breaking the document up might be
a way to manage the problem.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Some things that could help in general would be working in Normal view as
much as possible (with background repagination turned off), using picture
placeholders when possible, telling Word's spell check to ignore words with
numbers, and applying a "no proofing" character style to anything else that
is clearly not subject to spell-checking. But I still can't help feeling
that something else is wrong here; I just don't think spell checking should
be quitting like that.

One avenue we haven't really explored is whether the text that is not being
spell-checked has perhaps somehow gotten formatted as "Do not check spelling
or grammar." That of course would explain everything.

 

[Pete B]

Well, we can rule outthe formatting causing the problem. When this problem
does occur, he gets an error message that says he has too many spelling
errors and Word is shutting down spell checking. However, this is new info
that he just told me, I am going to ask him to record everything in the
error message to see if we can get some ideas that way.

AFA memory hogging or something, he tells me the document is about 300+
pages, about a 2MB file. I really don't think that should cause a problem.
We'll see....

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I've created documents longer than 300 pp. and much larger than 2 MB. In
Word 97 (!) on a computer that by today's standards was woefully
underspecced, I created a 270-page (nearly 4 MB) book with over a hundred
photos (linked), literally hundreds of small tables, and 4,865 XE fields.
But it was a family history book full of names, and I see that I have "Hide
spelling errors in this document" checked. If I try to turn it off, I get a
message that "There are too many spelling or grammatical errors in "Link
Family.doc" to continue displaying them. To check the spelling and grammar
of this document, choose Spelling and Grammar from the Tools menu."

So I ran the spell check manually, just clicking Ignore All on every name. I
ran out of patience halfway through the document (stopped at page 135), but
Word didn't seem to give any indication of wearying. There was one case
where I was unable to click Ignore All, perhaps because the word contained
an optional hyphen? At any rate, I clicked Ignore Once, and it resumed. In
all those 135 pages, I found only one actual mistake (and it didn't get
corrected because I was reflexively clicking Ignore All for everything!),
but the spelling checker seemed not to have a problem with these literally
thousands of names.

 

[Pete B]

That message is similar to what the customer gets. He provided a GIF of the
exact screen message he gets, it is one of those yellow boxes with alert or
warning status information that Office uses, with the little arrow on it,
and the message states:

"MIcrosoft Word (and one of those triangular icons with an exclamation
point)

There are too many spelling or grammatical
errors in xxxx.doc to continue displaying
them. To check the spelling and grammar of
this document, choose Spelling and Grammar
from the Tools menu.

...................<OK>..............................."

Maybe this is a problem peculiar to WordXP, but it seems quite common. Here
is yet another link to a blog that discusses the same defect:

http://www.mcse.ms/message1550491.html

This problem happens with only a modest number of errors displayed, Word
just stops showing the wavy underlines to indicate errors as you type. The
document the customer works on is modest size so I do not think it is a
problem with the document or the system, it appears to be a rather
widespread problem with the Word product that for some reason is
unacknowledged by MS .

I appreciate your attention to this. At this point, I have about given up
on a solution, as has the customer. It would be nice to see MS at least
acknowledge the existence of the problem, though, because it is not going to
go away, and it is becoming more and more publicly discussed as time goes on

I will report back if anything new is found, thanks again for trying to
help, in fact thanks for just listening so patiently.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm tending increasingly to believe this is a resources issue because I have
not seen this message in ordinary documents since I upgraded to a better
system. The document in question (with its thousands of family names
"misspelled") was an anomaly, of course. Still, your client has more RAM
than I have, so perhaps that's a red herring.

The only solution I can think of is to deal with the marked words on the
spot (since he is already using "Check spelling as you type"); he can
right-click and choose Ignore All. Interestingly, though, I find that this
seems to be session-specific. I used to think Word didn't remember what it
was ignoring from one session to the next, but what I'm finding now, in a
manuscript I'm typing that has a lot of intentional misspellings (dialect),
is that it does ignore all instances of a word up to the point where it's
told to ignore it (and perhaps even henceforward for the given session), but
when I start typing new text (in a new session), the same word is not
ignored when typed new even though existing instances are still ignored.
Since I don't know how the "ignoring" works (my guess is that it probably
covertly applies "Do not check spelling or grammar" formatting), I don't
really understand this.

 

[Pete B]

Unfortunately, since this customer is working on a book (actually, several
different texts currently) he does not like the idea of correcting as he
goes because it interrupts his progress and his train of thought. I may
noit have mentioned it, but this problem occurs on several different
systems, depending on which system he happens to pick to do his writing; so
I doubt it is a system or resources problem.

Well, we'll see how it goes. Maybe somebody will get at the actual root of
the problem somewhere, and at least find exactly what "triggers" the change
in execution of the software in Word. Maybe someone will find out what the
precise limit is for uncorrected errors that can be displayed before this
defect occurs.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Okay, I thought you said in a later post that he *was* correcting as he went
along. If he's not, there's not much point in enabling "Check spelling as
you type."

 

[Pete B]

No, what he said is, he likes to see what the errors are as he types, but he
does not want to stop and correct them until the end of the work session,
when he can go back and concentrate on errors only. So he wants spell check
on, but he does not want to have to take any action until he is ready to
finish up the work for the period. He does want it on continually, that was
what his original complaint was, that he could not get it to stay on, it
just quits highlighting errors at some arbitrary point.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Ah, I see. Well, there may not be any way around that, I'm afraid.