SUMMARY: Other Office 2010 apps automatically check document spelling, but not Excel 2010. Here’s how to perform a manual spell check.
This tip is for Microsoft Excel 2010 beginners.
While other Office 2010 applications automatically spell check a document, this does not happen in Excel 2010. This is presumably because most worksheets contain primarily numerical data, and may contain headers and other descriptor text (such as acronyms or business names) that won’t be found in the dictionary. However, mistakes can happen even when tyipng (sic) just a little bit of text, so here’s how to manually spell check an entire worksheet or just part of one.
1. Open a worksheet, and then if desired select just the cells to spell check. If you don’t select any cells, Excel 2010 will later attempt to spell check the entire worksheet.
2. Either select the “Review” tab in the Ribbon, and then click “Spelling” in the “Proofing” section. Or, press F7.
Spell check should then proceed similar to the manual spell check feature in other Office 2010 applications.
NOTE that while Excel 2010 does not automatically spell check a document, AutoCorrect features are available and turned on by default. Thus, typing “addtional” into a cell should cause Excel 2010 to change the text to “additional”, for example.