Correcting Your Spelling

If you think that a spelling check can't improve the look of your presentation, just think for a moment how ugly a blatant spelling error would look in huge type on a five-foot projection screen. Frightening, isn't it? If that image makes you nervous, it should. Spelling mistakes can creep past even the most literate people, and pop up where you least expect them, often at embarrassing moments.

Fortunately, like other Microsoft Office programs, PowerPoint comes with a powerful spelling program that can check your work for you at any time, minimizing the number of embarrassing spelling mistakes. The Office programs all use the same spelling checker, and so if you are familiar with it in another Office application, you should be able to breeze through a spell check in PowerPoint with no problem.

Caution 

When PowerPoint marks a word as misspelled, it really just means that the word is not in its dictionary. Many words, especially proper names, are perfectly okay to use, even though they are not in PowerPoint's dictionary, so don't believe PowerPoint against your own good judgment.

Checking an Individual Word

As you work, PowerPoint underlines words that aren't in its dictionary with a red, wavy line. Whenever you see a red-underlined word, you can right-click it to see a list of spelling suggestions, as shown in Figure 8.3. Click the correction that you want, or click one of the other commands:

• Ignore All: Ignores this and all other instances of the word in this PowerPoint session. If you exit and restart PowerPoint, the list is wiped out.

• Add to Dictionary: Adds this word to PowerPoint's custom dictionary. (You learn more about the custom dictionary later in this chapter.)

• Spelling: Opens the spelling checker, described in the next section.

Figure 8.3: Right-click a red-underlined word for quick spelling advice.

EXPERT TIP 

If you don't want to see the red, wavy underlines on-screen, you can turn the feature off by selecting Office PowerPoint Options, and then clicking Proofing. Click the Hide Spelling Errors check box and click OK. This just turns the underlines off; it doesn't stop PowerPoint from checking spelling as you type. A separate Check Spelling As You Type check box, in the same location, does that. Turning off Check Spelling as You Type relieves PowerPoint of a small processing burden, making it run a bit faster.

Checking the Entire Presentation

If your presentation is long, it can become tiresome to individually right-click each wavy-underlined word or phrase. In such cases, it's easier to use the spell-check feature in PowerPoint to check all of the words in the presentation.

To begin the spell check, click the Spelling button on the Review tab, or press F7. If there are no misspelled words in your presentation, PowerPoint presents a dialog box telling you that your spell check is complete. Click OK to close this dialog box. If, on the other hand, PowerPoint finds a misspelled word, you can choose from several options, as shown in Figure 8.4:

• Not in Dictionary text box: Shows the misspelled word.

• Change To text box: Shows what the spelling will be changed to if you click the Change or Change All buttons. You can choose a word from the Suggestions list or type your own correction here.

• Suggestions text box: Lists words that are close to the spelling of the word that you actually typed. Choose the one you want by clicking it; this moves it to the Change To text box.

• Ignore button: Skips over this occurrence of the word.

• Ignore All button: Skips over all occurrences of the word in this PowerPoint session only.

• Change button: Changes the word to the word shown in the Change To text box.

• Change All button: Changes all occurrences of the word in the entire presentation to the word in the Change To text box.

• Add button: Adds the word to PowerPoint's custom dictionary so that it is recognized in the future.

• Suggest button: Displays the suggestions in the Suggestions text box if you have set the spell checker's options so that suggestions do not automatically appear.

• AutoCorrect button: Adds the word to the AutoCorrect list so that if you misspell it the same way in the future, PowerPoint automatically corrects it as you type. See the "Using AutoCorrect to Fix Common Problems" section later in this chapter.

• Close button: Closes the Spelling dialog box.

Figure 8.4: When PowerPoint finds a misspelled word with the spell checker, you can respond to it using these controls.

When PowerPoint can't find any more misspelled words, it displays a dialog box to let you know this; click OK to close it.

EXPERT TIP 

If you have more than one language dictionary available (for example, if you use PowerPoint in a multilingual office and have purchased multiple language packs from Microsoft), then you can specify which language's dictionary to use for which text. To do so, select the text that is in a different language than the rest of the presentation, and then click Set Language on the Review tab. Select the appropriate language from the list and click OK.

Setting Spelling Options

To control how (and whether) the spell checker operates, do the following:

1. Choose Office PowerPoint Options, and click Proofing. The Proofing options appear, as shown in Figure 8.5.

   
   Figure 8.5: You can set spelling options here.

2. Select or deselect any of the check boxes as desired in the When Correcting Spelling in Office Programs section:

   • Ignore Words in UPPERCASE: Prevents the spell checker from flagging acronyms.

   • Ignore Words That Contain Numbers: Prevents the spell checker from noticing words with digits in them, such as license plate numbers or model numbers.

   • Ignore Internet and File Addresses: Prevents the spell checker from flagging Web or e-mail addresses, network paths, or file paths.

   • Flag Repeated Words: Flags second and subsequent instances of the same word in a row, preventing you from making mistakes like writing "the the."

   • Suggest From Main Dictionary Only: Ignores any custom spelling dictionaries if any are present.

   • Always Suggest Corrections: This option is selected by default. It allows suggestions to appear in the Suggestions text box in the Spelling dialog box (Figure 8-4). You can turn this option off for a very small improvement in performance. If you then want a suggestion as you are checking the spelling, you can click the Suggest button.

   Note 

   The options in the When Correcting Spelling in Office Programs section apply across all Office programs, including Word and Excel.

3. Select or deselect any of the check boxes as desired in the When Correcting Spelling in PowerPoint section:

   • Check Spelling As You Type: This option is on by default. Turning it off prevents the spell checker from noticing and underlining words in red that it can't find in its dictionary. This can cause a small improvement in performance on a slow computer; you will not notice the difference on a fast computer.

   • Use Contextual Spelling: Allows PowerPoint to flag possible errors in context. For example, when this feature is on, PowerPoint identifies "I will go their." as a misspelling for the word "there." This feature also uses some memory, and so it can affect performance on a slow computer.

   • Hide Spelling Errors: This option is off by default. Selecting this check box prevents the red, wavy underline from appearing beneath misspelled words. It does not prevent the spell checker from checking them; you can right-click a misspelled word to see suggestions for it, as you normally would.

4. Click OK to accept the new settings.

Working with Custom Dictionaries

The main spelling dictionary in PowerPoint is read-only, and so when you add words to the dictionary, these words have to be stored somewhere else. This is where custom dictionaries come in. A custom dictionary contains a list of words that should not be flagged as misspellings. It can include proper names, acronyms, abbreviations, or any other codes or text strings that you frequently type.

Note 

PowerPoint shares custom dictionaries with the other Office 2007 applications, and so you can use these dictionaries in PowerPoint or in one of the other applications.

The default custom dictionary is called custom.dic, and it's stored in a separate folder for each local user. If you are running Windows Vista, it's in Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\UProof. If you are running Windows XP, it's in Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\ Microsoft\UProof. Because it is unique to the logged-in user, each user can have his or her own custom dictionary.

EXPERT TIP 

If there is a custom.dic file in a folder called Proof (as opposed to UProof), it's left over from an earlier version of Office. If you upgraded to Office 2007, any words that you already set up in it were copied over to the version in the UProof folder. Leave it in place if you still run an older version of Office, as well. Otherwise, you can delete it or leave it as you want.

Editing the Custom Dictionary

As you are spell checking, one of the options that you can use is Add to Dictionary-mentioned earlier in the chapter-which adds the word to the default custom dictionary. By default, this file is custom.dic. You'll learn how to create additional custom dictionaries later in this chapter.

You can also add words to the custom dictionary without having to type them in the presentation and then spell-check them. Follow these steps to add words:

1. Choose Office PowerPoint options.

2. Click Proofing.

3. Click Custom Dictionaries.

4. Select the desired custom dictionary from the list. In Figure 8.6, only the default custom.dic dictionary appears.

   
   Figure 8.6: Edit custom dictionaries from the Custom Dictionaries dialog box.

5. Click Edit Word List. A dialog box appears, listing all of the words that are currently in that dictionary.

6. To add a new word, type it in the Word(s) text box and click Add. Words can be no longer than 64 characters.

7. To delete a word, select it and click Delete. To clear the entire custom dictionary, click Delete All.

8. Click OK when you are finished editing the custom dictionary.

Caution 

The custom dictionary accepts multi-word entries, but you must enter them as separate words in the list; it does not recognize spellings that consist of only part of the word. For example, you could enter Shawna Browslawski, but the spell checker would not recognize Shawna or Browslawski by themselves. However, if you enter them as separate words, they are accepted either individually or together.

If you have a lot of words to add to the dictionary, you might prefer to edit the dictionary file manually. Dictionary files are plain-text files, and so you can edit them in Notepad. You can even combine two or more separate dictionary files into a single file by copying and pasting lists of words between them. To edit a dictionary file, open it in a text editor such as Notepad. Remember, the paths for the dictionary files are:

• Windows Vista: Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\UProof

• Windows XP: Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\UProof

Creating a New Custom Dictionary

A custom dictionary file can be as large as 64KB in size, or 5,000 words. If you need a larger custom dictionary than this, you must create another dictionary file. You might also want additional custom dictionaries to keep sets of words separate for different clients or projects. For example, when working for a client with many trademarked product names that consist of non-traditional spellings of common words, you might want to set those names as correctly spelled, but when working for another client who does not use those names, you might want those words to be flagged as possible misspellings. You can enable or disable each custom dictionary, and so you can enable only the dictionaries that apply to the present project.

EXPERT TIP 

All spell checks use the main dictionary as well as all of the dictionaries that are selected in the Dictionary List. To disable a certain dictionary from being used, deselect its check box in the Custom Dictionaries dialog box.

To create a custom dictionary, follow these steps:

1. Choose Office PowerPoint options.

2. Click Proofing.

3. Click Custom Dictionaries.

4. Click New. The Create Custom Dictionary dialog box appears.

5. Navigate to the location in which you want to store the dictionary. The location where you store it depends on who you want to be able to access it:

   • To make the dictionary accessible to all users of your PC, store it in Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE12\Dictionaries.

   • To make the dictionary accessible to only the current Windows user, store it in the default custom dictionary location:

     Windows Vista: Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\UProof

     Windows XP: Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\UProof

6. Type a name for the dictionary in the File name text box.

7. Click Save.

The new dictionary appears in the Dictionary List in the Custom Dictionaries dialog box.

EXPERT TIP 

All enabled custom dictionaries are checked automatically during the spell-check process, but newly added words are placed only in the default custom dictionary. To set the default dictionary, select a custom dictionary in the Custom Dictionaries dialog box and then click the Change Default button.