Spelling is controlled by three things:
1) The languages Microsoft sold you
2) The language marked in the text
3) The presence of a Custom Dictionary.
1) Since you're not trying to spell in any language other than English US,
and we can assume you have an English copy of Word, we do not need to
consider number 1.
2) You have only three "English" languages in Word 2004: US, UK, and AUS.
If your text is formatted with any one of the 29 other flavours of English
out there, Spelling is disabled.
In Tools>Language, make quite sure that the checkbox "Do not check spelling
or grammar" is NOT checked for any of the text in your document.
Pay particular indication to the formatting styles you are using. These can
have a Spelling Language, and if they have, it will control the spelling
checker. Make very sure that none of the styles you are using is set to "No
Proofing": that's a psuedo-language created to disable spelling and grammar
checking for any text formatted with the specified style.
3) Check specifically the settings in Word>Preferences>Spelling and Grammar.
If you have been playing around with the custom dictionary, these settings
will have been turned off, and you need to turn them back on.
"Check spelling as you type" should be ON
"Hide spelling errors in this document" should be OFF.
"Check grammar as you type" should be ON
"Hide grammatical errors in this document" should be OFF.
In "Custom Dictionary" the name of the custom dictionary should appear
(normally, it is simply "Custom Dictionary". If you click the button
"Dictionaries..." your custom dictionary should have a check mark beside
it, and its Language should be set to "(none)".
If you specify any language other than "none" you disable spelling for any
language other than the one you specify. With so many different versions of
English out there, English-speaking users (and Americans...) are best to set
the language to "none" to ensure that spelling works no matter where you
paste text from.
It is possible (reasonably common...) for a Custom Dictionary to get
corrupted by a bug in Word. If this happens, the easiest fix is to delete
it, then re-start Word and create a new one.
Reinstalling software on a Mac almost never fixes anything, and usually
makes existing problems worse. The files that get damaged are not on the CD
to be re-installed, so the best that can happen is "nothing". However,
after re-installing, you need to be sure to re-apply all the updates,
because you potentially filled your computer with files that have never been
updated.
So you should go here:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx
Download and run 11.5.5, -6, 7, 8 updates. Before you run the updates, run
Disk Utility and Repair Permissions on your boot drive, then restart the
system. This ensures that the updates have the correct permissions to write
to your disk. It's a good idea to repair permissions again and restart the
system again after applying the updates, just to make sure that everything
remains correct.
It's better to use the website than AutoUpdate if you have stirred things
up, because that can confuse AutoUpdate into assuming that patches have been
applied when your computer actually contains files that have not been
updated (because they came in from the CD in their unpatched state).
Do all of those, in the sequence shown, and it should come right. If it
doesn't, come back and we'll get serious with it for you
Cheers
Version: 2004 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Processor: Intel Spell
check will not work in anyway, I have the Student & Teacher 2004 edition.
I've been attempting to solve this issue for a while now, so I have tried a
variety of suggestions already;
tools>language>english us (unchecked hide grammar and spelling box)
word preferences
reinstalling
none of these worked,
any suggestions please?
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