Spell check behaving badly in Bermuda

[triangle]

Mac G4 running Word X for OS 10. Spell checking a document keeps
finding false spelling errors. For example it might stop at "the"
highlighting "th" or stop on "stood" highlighting "st".

Also it is stopping on valid words such as "chemical" or "decimated".
It didn't always do this - it's just started doing it.

Another related problem is I regularly get the "Beach ball of death"
during spell checking and have to Force Quit and start over.

Any ideas please?

 

[matt neuburg]

Mac G4 running Word X for OS 10. Spell checking a document keeps
finding false spelling errors. For example it might stop at "the"
highlighting "th" or stop on "stood" highlighting "st".

Also it is stopping on valid words such as "chemical" or "decimated".
It didn't always do this - it's just started doing it.

Another related problem is I regularly get the "Beach ball of death"
during spell checking and have to Force Quit and start over.

Any ideas please?

Maybe you're a victim of the Bermuda Triangle April Fools spell-checker
virus! We did a great hack many years ago where we substituted a
custom set of auto-correction on a friend's machine that proceeded to
"correct" all his typing to "politically correct" speech - so that e.g.
"old" came out as "youth-challenged" and so forth. Another hilarious day
in the office... m.

 

[triangle]

Thank you for sharing Matt - perhaps I should repost tomorrow!

 

[matt neuburg]

Thank you for sharing Matt - perhaps I should repost tomorrow!

Oh, you wanted a *real* answer?

Maybe the Language is set to some other language. One where "the" is not
a word...? m.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Some standard tips:
To check re the wrong language:

Probably part of your text is set to No Proofing ("do not check spelling and
grammar" checkbox in Word 2004), or the wrong language.
You have to assign a language to the text for Word to spellcheck it.

To test this, with the cursor in a word that isn't being checked, go to
Tools | Language and see what comes up selected.

To assign a language, select all text and use Tools | Language.

This may have happened if you pasted in some text that was already set to a
different language, and then kept hitting enter and typing from that block
of text.

If this happens in multiple documents, you may need to use a style-based
solution instead of the manual formatting solution given above. Post back
if so.

Re the constant beachball, work through the standard troubleshooting tips
listed here:

http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/TroubleshootingIndex.htm
(hit refresh a few times in Safari, or use a different browser)

DM

 

[triangle]

Thanks Daiya for your help. I had already tried the no proofing and
language options after reading earlier postings. It was a weird thing -
doesn't happen all the time - it may be just a specific document(s).

As to the beach ball thing - thanks for the troubleshooting reference.
I will start going through that to see if there is anything that can
improve the situation.

Cheers.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

The troubleshooting reference also has troubleshooting for corrupt
documents, which you could try on the ones with problematic spelling.

DM