In this article, we’ll learn how to use spell check in Google Sheets to find misspelled words. We’ll also see in detail about different options present in the “Spell check” menu.
You might’ve used spell checker in Microsoft Word or Google Docs. It is a very convenient tool and helps a lot in finding and correcting spelling mistakes. We often use it to check out documents for any spelling mistakes.
In Google Sheets, however, spelling mistakes could occur and it is often necessary to have a spreadsheet that is free of such mistakes. You could have a list of useful items, names of people, addresses, or any other useful information where words need to be spelled correctly.
Likewise, we have a spreadsheet here that lists common grocery items. The list has some entries that are misspelled. Have a look.
You might have noticed misspelled words in the list. So, the agenda for this article is to correct these mistakes by using Google Sheets’ spell-check.
How should we go about this problem?
We aim to make you familiar with the spell check utility in Google Sheets as well as how to use it conveniently by setting up the shortcut key for it.
We’ll first see the different options in “Spell check” and after getting familiar with it, we’ll then move on to the tutorial about how to use spell check in Google Sheets to find misspelled words.
Different Spell Check Options
“Spell check” in Google Sheets offers several different options. You need to be familiar with it to use it efficiently. These options are present in the “Spell check” dialog box.
1. Change
The “Change” option allows us to change a misspelled word to its suggested correct version. However, the suggested version could be changed and you can type the correct spelling. Also, if the same misspelled word appears more than one time in your spreadsheet, then you can also change them all in one go.
For that, you need to click on the arrow in the “Change” button and it shows “Change All”. You need to click on it, and then you’re good to go.
2. Ignore
As the name suggests, the “Ignore” option could be used to ignore the word that is misspelled. If there is more than one instance of such word in your spreadsheet, you can ignore them all in one go by clicking on the “Ignore All” option.
3. Add to dictionary
This option is useful when you’ve names, addresses, or anything important that could be falsely picked by “Spell check” to be misspelled. You can use the “Add to dictionary” option to add that particular word to your “personal dictionary”.
Once you’ve added that to your “personal dictionary” then “Spell check” would no longer report that word to be misspelled.
Now that you’re familiar with the different “Spell check” options, therefore, it’s time to move to the tutorial where we actually use “Spell check” to find and correct misspelled words.
How to Use Spell Check in Google Sheets to Find Misspelled Words
In this tutorial, we’ll break down the process of using “Spell check” in Google Sheets into simple steps. So let’s get into it without further ado.
- Let’s get started with our “Grocery items” spreadsheet.
- As you might’ve noticed by now that we have got a couple of misspelled items. “Yogert” should be “Yogurt” and “Choclate” should be spelled as “Chocolate”.
- To find and correct these spelling mistakes with Spell Check, we’ll first select the column A1:A8.
- You can also select the entire spreadsheet by clicking the highlighted cell, shown in the image below. This is a nice shortcut way of selecting an entire spreadsheet.
- We’ll continue with our column A1:A8. Now, from the top menu, navigate to the Tools drop-down menu.
- In the Tools menu, navigate to Spelling > Spell check.
- The spell check dialog box will appear on the right side of your screen.
- As we can see that it already has found a spelling mistake and suggests to correct it by clicking on the Change button.
- Once we’ve clicked the Change button, the first misspelled word has been corrected. Now it moves on to the second misspelled word.
- Once again, we will click the Change button. The Spell check would correct it as well. Finally, we’ve no other misspelled item on our list.
Next, we move on to learning about the keyboard shortcut for spell check.
Keyboard Shortcut for Spell Check
Spell check is a frequently used tool. A better and efficient approach will be to have easy access to this tool. For this purpose, we’ll see the keyboard shortcut for this handy function.
But before we could use this shortcut, we need to enable the shortcut option in Google Sheets. Once this has been done, you can use the keyboard shortcut every time you need to use spell check.
In this tutorial, we will see how we can enable a compatible spreadsheet shortcut option.
- Navigate to the Help option on the menu.
- In the Help dropdown, navigate to Keyboard shortcuts.
- In the Keyboard shortcuts menu, make sure to enable the Enable compatible spreadsheet shortcuts.
- Once this option is enabled, you can use the shortcut key for the spell check, which is:
F7
- Let’s use this shortcut. We’ll try to use spell check for a misspelled word in our spreadsheet.
- We’ll press F7 on the keyboard, and you will see the spell check menu appear.
- We’re done. You’re now aware of how to use the shortcut for the spell check.
That should be all you need. You can now use spell check in Google Sheets to find and correct misspelled words. Check out our other numerous Google Sheets formulas to create even more complex and useful functions in Google Sheets.
