[JonGee]

For my written assignments I rely heavily on spell checker to check my work in Microsoft Office Word XP. When I formatted recently the [bleep] thing is not working properly and since my second year back at Uni starts next Tuesday I really need to get this fixed in a rush.

I've tried Google for the answers and I've searched the Question/Answer knowledge base on Microsoft's website and have tried all the suggestions, it's probably a simple solution but i can't seem to find it. My last resort is to pay Microsoft their online support which costs £50, so £10 seems fair.

The problem:

Microsoft word is picking up the spelling errors and correctly identifies them:



But for a split second after I select F7 or Spell Check, the blue highlight disappears and Spell checker will not let me select the correct spelling in the suggestion box:



Has anyone got the solution?

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Have you tried going to the Help menu and check Detect and Repair and let it run repair of Word?

Ron

[Major Payne]

Have you tried going to the Help menu and check Detect and Repair and let it run repair of Word?

Ron

[Neil Jones]

This is often caused by clicking away from the box to click on something else.
Do you have the Office XP Service Packs installed?

[wdcisco]

Reinstall M. Word and this should fix it! Hey I want that l10!

[JonGee]

I've tried all those suggestions.

Any ideas what it could be?

[Major Payne]

Possible Word infection by malware.

Ron

[JonGee]

I've done a full system scan with Adaware Pro and unfortunatly it hasn't picked anything up

Im tempted to give up now with Microsoft word and goto OpenOffice!!!!!!!!

[Murray S.]

Howdy:

This works on alot of Word problems so no harm in trying it on this one as well.

Do a search for "normal.dot" (no quotes).

Once you find it, delete it.

Now, restart your system and open Word. The file will be replaced automatically.

Murray

[Major Payne]

No one program can pick up all the malware out there. To be on the safe side and to be sure it is not malware affecting Word, please Please go to the Malware section of this forum and follow the instructions at the top. Especially the Click Here link. That will give you several steps that will help you clean up most of all problems by yourself. If at the end of the cleanup process you are still having difficulty, and you may not be, then post a hijackthis log in THAT forum.

Please be patient as the "Malware Forum" is a very busy place and a two or three day wait is not unusual.

If you are still having problems after getting a clean bill of health from the Malware Section, please return to this thread. Please do not post a HiJackThis log in this thread unless asked to do so and then only as an attachment. To attach log, when requested, either change the .log extension to .txt, or put the log into a compressed (zipped) folder.

Please post back if your problem has been solved.

Since you have run detect and repair and totally uninstalled/reinstalled Word plus all the other suggestions (see your post #5), then it's time to try a more thorough method.

1) Try turning off the Grammar check and see if selections remain after pressing F7.

2) In one of your saved/new documents, select a misspelled word that is not recognized as such. Then check the language settings under Tools > Language > Set Language. Unchecked the option for "do not check spelling or grammar". See if F7 functions normally.
3)The problem may be in the Registry, of which you would need to make a backup before attempting this:

Proofing Tools folders in your Registry: Go to your Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Shared Tools\ Proofing Tools (in Windows XP this folder is found in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Shared Tools\ Proofing Tools). In this Proofing Tools folder, you will see four subfolders: Grammar, Hyphenation, Spelling, and Thesaurus. Just delete the folder that is causing problems and relaunch Word and it should create a new one for you.

Those are all the ideas I have right now.

Ron

Saw your post on CastleCops.

Edited by Major Payne, 20 September 2007 - 09:18 PM.

[JonGee]

I have taken a look with regedit, and there was not four subfolders in the proofing tools only one subfolder called Grammar:



I wonder if that is the problem?
If so, what should I do?

[Major Payne]

Let me see if I can get more help on this. Since you don't have a Spelling Folder to delete, it may be the cause. I just don't know at this point. Did you try Murray's suggestion in #8?

Ron

Edited by Major Payne, 20 September 2007 - 09:28 PM.

[JonGee]

Yes, tried that twice.

[piper]

Did you find the normal.dot file?

[peterm]

Ok lets step back a bit here,
You said in your 1st post

But for a split second after I select F7 or Spell Check, the blue highlight disappears and Spell checker will not let me select the correct spelling in the suggestion box:

Why are you pressing F7?
Once the word has been highlighted instead of pressing F7 you should be choosing the word and then click on change
Because you are pressing F7 at that point (picture 2) you are telling word that you want to edit the word yourself and not let spell checker fix the word.
Step 1 run spell checker
Step 2) pick the word you want to change it to by clicking on the word
Step 3) Click on change
once you have started spell checker for the 1st time DO NOT press F7 again
Cheers
Peterm

[JonGee]

Thank you for the reply peterm.

To be honest I've given up this problem now and for the time being I'm using the free edition of OpenOffice.Org.
It doesn't seem to make any sense as to why my Office disc is not working (It always used too) so I'm guessing my disc is faulty or damaged, so until I raise more funds to buy another Microsoft Office Disc I shall continue using OpenOffice.Org.

With the F7, I was only pressing it once and that was at the end of writing an assignment to check all the spelling and grammar in that assignment. I have even tried not pressing F7 and going into the TOOLS bar and selecting Spell Checker from there, but still the problem occurs.

I'm guessing its a faulty disc, but big thank you for everyone for trying....(Has anyone got any spare pennies for a new disc? )

Edited by JonGee, 24 September 2007 - 02:27 AM.