Locked lesson.
About this lesson
We will learn how to customize our proofing tools in PowerPoint Options and then run a spelling and grammar check prior to sharing the presentation with others.
Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
6.01-checking-spelling-and-grammar Exercise.docx585.5 KB 6.01-checking-spelling-and-grammar Exercise Solution.docx
647 KB
Quick reference
Checking Spelling and Grammar
Nothing makes a presentation look unprofessional quite like spelling and grammar errors. It's important to spell check your slides prior to sending to a customer, client or your boss.
In PowerPoint, we can check our spelling as we type and make corrections as we work or we can check the whole presentation at the end.
When to use
Always run a spell check on presentations prior to finalising and sending to others.
Instructions
Check Spelling As You Type
You can check and correct spelling errors as you type. PowerPoint will flag misspelt words with a red squiggly underline.
- Right-click on the spelling error.
- Choose a suggestion from the menu to correct.
We do not have to make a selection from the words suggested by PowerPoint. PowerPoint will flag any words it doesn't recognise in its internal dictionary. This means that occasionally, some words like peoples names, company names etc, will flag as misspelt when they are not. If this is the case, you have 3 options: Ignore, Ignore All or Add to Dictionary.
To stop the word from flagging in the future, click Add to Dictionary. To simply ignore this occurence and move on to the next work, click Ignore. To ignore every occurence of this word in the presentation, click Ignore All.
Proofing Options
Customise proofing options in the backstage area.
- From the File tab, click Options.
- Click on the Proofing page.
- Scroll down to the section When correcting spelling and grammar in PowerPoint.
- Place a tick in the box next to Check spelling as you type and Mark grammar errors as you type.
- Click OK.
If we have uppercase, misspelt words in our presentation and PowerPoint is not flagging them as errors, review the Proofing options page.
- From the section When correcting spelling in Microsoft Office programs untick the box next to Ignore words in UPPERCASE.
Spell Check At The End
We could correct errors as we type or run a spell check at the end as part of our finalising process. Spell Check can be invoked at any time.
- Press the F7 keyboard shortcut.
- Or, from the Review tab, in the Proofing group, click Spelling.
- The Spellling Pane will open.
- Go through the document.
- To make a correction choose the correct spelling from the list and click Change.
- Alternatively, Ignore, Ignore All or Add to Dictionary.
Hints & tips
- Grammar errors will flag in blue or green depending on your version of PowerPoint.
- Grammar errors relate to conciseness and poorly structured sentences and can be corrected from a list of suggestions much like spelling errors.
- 00:04 One thing you must ensure that you do, before sending out your presentation to
- 00:09 your manager, colleagues or even clients is spell check.
- 00:12 Because nothing looks more unprofessional than sending out a presentation which
- 00:17 has mistakes all over it.
- 00:19 And when it comes to spell checking in PowerPoint,
- 00:21 there are two different ways that you can spell check.
- 00:24 You can choose to spell check as you go,
- 00:26 where PowerPoint will flag any misspelled words or grammatical errors,
- 00:31 or you can choose to just do a big spell check at the end.
- 00:35 And which one of these you choose is very much down to personal preference.
- 00:39 So let me demonstrate both of these.
- 00:41 Now if you're looking for your spell check option, you're going to find it on
- 00:44 the review tab and it's in this first group here called proofing.
- 00:49 And there is a keyboard shortcut for spelling and that is F7.
- 00:53 Now let's review the first way that you can spell check, and
- 00:56 that is to check spelling and grammar as you type.
- 00:59 So if I scroll down to a slide that contains some text.
- 01:04 You can see here that I've added some mistakes into this presentation.
- 01:09 And what you'll notice is that wherever I have a mistake, I have a red squiggly line
- 01:13 underneath, and that's highlighting to me that this word is spelled incorrectly.
- 01:19 Now if you have a grammatical error,
- 01:21 then that will also be highlighted in the document with a blue underline.
- 01:26 So in general, the way that I work is I like to check my spelling as I type,
- 01:30 so as soon as I see that I spelt something wrong,
- 01:33 I can correct it on the spot as I go through.
- 01:35 So what I could do here is a right click on the misspelled word.
- 01:39 And you'll see in the right click menu,
- 01:41 PowerPoint is going to provide me with a number of suggestions.
- 01:44 So it's basically trying to work out what I was trying to spell.
- 01:49 And for the most part you're going to find the correct word in this list.
- 01:52 So for me, I meant to say space.
- 01:55 So what I can do is just select it from this list and
- 01:57 it's going to correct that spelling error.
- 01:59 And I like to work this way because I just like to fix things as I go along.
- 02:04 Let's do the same for this one, I meant to say and, so
- 02:07 let's select it from that little right click menu.
- 02:10 Now in order for PowerPoint to flag misspelled words and
- 02:13 grammatical errors as you type,
- 02:15 you need to make sure you have that little checkbox selected in PowerPoint options.
- 02:20 So let me just show you where that's located.
- 02:22 If we jump up to file and go all the way down to options at the bottom,
- 02:27 we want to be on that proofing page.
- 02:30 And right at the bottom here you can see I have a checkbox,
- 02:33 check spelling as you type, and also mark grammar errors as you type.
- 02:37 So if you find that PowerPoint isn't flagging any mistakes that you make,
- 02:41 check that you have both of these options turned on.
- 02:44 Now for something like this word just here, Land Co, if I right click,
- 02:49 PowerPoint has provided me with the capitalized version of that word,
- 02:53 but it hasn't really given me any other suggestions.
- 02:57 And what you might find is that for certain words, so things like people's
- 03:02 names, or maybe company names, Power Point won't recognize them in the dictionary.
- 03:07 And if it can't find it in its internal dictionary,
- 03:10 it's going to flag it as a misspelled word.
- 03:12 And a lot of the time that isn't the case,
- 03:15 it's just not included in the PowerPoint dictionary.
- 03:18 So the other two options I have down here are I can choose to ignore.
- 03:22 So if I know that that word is spelled correctly, I can just ignore or
- 03:26 if it's a word that I use all the time, so maybe it's a colleague's name or
- 03:31 my own company name, I could choose to add it to the dictionary.
- 03:34 And what that means is that each time I type this word in future,
- 03:38 it's not going to flag as being misspelled.
- 03:41 Now, another thing that you'll notice is if I scroll down to this slide just here,
- 03:47 the one where we have our sunburst chart,
- 03:50 you can see in the title I've made a spelling error.
- 03:53 So the first word sales is in upper case, it's spelled wrong, but
- 03:57 PowerPoint isn't flagging that as a spelling error.
- 04:02 And again, this is due to another setting that I have in PowerPoint options.
- 04:07 So once again, let's jump up to here, go down to options and into proofing.
- 04:12 And in this second group, the first option there is ignore words in uppercase, and
- 04:17 I actually have that ticked.
- 04:20 And that is why it's not picking up the fact that the word sales is spelled
- 04:24 incorrectly.
- 04:25 So I'm going to take a tick out of that box.
- 04:28 Click on OK, and now you can see that is flagging as a misspelled word.
- 04:33 So let's right click, and I'm going to correct that to sales.
- 04:38 Now a lot of the text that I have in this particular presentation is going to flag
- 04:42 as misspelled, because PowerPoint doesn't recommend this lorem ipsum text.
- 04:46 So I'm not going to worry too much about that,
- 04:49 because in general this type of thing wouldn't occur in a real world scenario.
- 04:53 So that is how you can check your spelling and grammar as you type.
- 04:57 Now the other option that you have is to just run a big old spellcheck,
- 05:00 when you've completed your presentation.
- 05:03 So, if I want to just invoke the spellcheck, and I can invoke it at any
- 05:07 time not just at the end, all I need to do is go to the review tab.
- 05:12 In the proofing group, I can click this spelling button.
- 05:16 You'll also notice that there is a shortcut key for this of F7.
- 05:19 This is going to open up this spelling pane on the right hand side, and
- 05:23 it's going to go through my entire presentation,
- 05:26 flagging any items that have been spelled incorrectly.
- 05:31 Now again because I have this test x in here.
- 05:33 We have a high amount of spelling errors.
- 05:36 Now I'm just going to choose to ignore all of these.
- 05:39 And again, you can see here it's picking up people's names.
- 05:43 So I'm going to say ignore all to these ones as well.
- 05:46 We're now back around to the beginning of the presentation, and
- 05:49 PowerPoint has picked up the word winning.
- 05:52 So the suggestion is giving me here is correct, so I can select it and
- 05:56 say change.
- 05:57 The next one L&D, well that is actually correct.
- 06:01 So I'm going to say,
- 06:02 ignore all and now it's found that I spelled the word number wrong.
- 06:07 So I want to correct it to the suggestion just here and I'm going to say change.
- 06:12 The next word is supposed to be goes.
- 06:13 So let's select that one and change, and then finally here and
- 06:17 change, once Power Point has been through your entire presentation,
- 06:22 it will tell you that your spell check is now complete.
- 06:26 So super simple to run a spell check on your document.
- 06:29 Definitely jump into PowerPoint options and review the items that you have checked
- 06:33 in there, that's it for this lesson, I will see you in the next video.
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