Richard notes that when doing a spelling check in the background, Word dutifully underlines words it thinks are spelled incorrectly. However, when he right-clicks on the word in order to add it to the dictionary, he finds the 'add to dictionary' option grayed out, so that he cannot add it.

The most likely cause for this situation is that the language of the word you are trying to add doesn't match the language of the dictionary. Word keeps track of the language of both your text and allows you to specify with what language a dictionary should be associated. You can check the language of your dictionary in this manner: • Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options.

In Word 2010 display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.) • Click Proofing at the left side of the dialog box. • Click on the Custom Dictionaries button. Word displays the Custom Dictionaries dialog box. (See Figure 1.) Figure 1. The Custom Dictionaries dialog box.• In the list of dictionaries, select the one you want to check.

• At the bottom of the dialog box is the Language drop-down list. This should be set to All Languages. • Close all the open dialog boxes when you are done.

Microsoft Word can helpfully correct or point out spelling errors and other errors as you type. But when you've purposely typed a word a certain way, those squiggly red lines and autocorrections. The spell checker may make mistakes. If it flags a spelling that is actually correct, select Ignore to tell Word to accept the current spelling.Ignore All tells the tool to accept all words in the document with that spelling. To add the word to the spell checker, so it won't flag it in the future, select Add.

Snipit app for mac. If you have the custom dictionary set to something other than All Languages in step 5, then Word only lets you add words that are in the language you specified. In other words, if you set the language in step 6 to French, then you won't be able to add any words that are in English, German, Spanish, or some other language. You can always set up multiple custom dictionaries and make sure that each of them is configured to the different languages in which you are working.

If the above steps don't solve the problem, then it is possible that you don't have a custom dictionary set up on your system. Of course, if you tried to go through the above steps, you would have noticed fairly easily that there wasn't a custom dictionary—there would have been nothing shown in the Custom Dictionaries dialog box (step 3). You could also check to make sure that the dictionary is accessible by you and that you have rights to work on it.

This potential problem normally only crops up if you are using a custom dictionary on a network and you don't have sufficient permissions to make changes to the file. If you suspect this is an issue in your case, you should talk with your network administrator to get it checked out.

Thank you for this 'add to dictionary' info'. I was warned that if I removed the current default dictionary it would remove it from other Microsoft programmes. First few times I didn't because I always back off from a warning but of course the 'Add to dictionary' setting didn't change.

You could give the information for people like me that they must select the Custom.dic as default and then uncheck the other choices. Never assume a ludite will do what you take for granted. It worked in the end though so I am grateful for that.

I use Word 2007. I'm writing a series of novels and want Spell Check to stop flagging the unusual names of certain characters--not merely to Ignore All in one document. This is obviously *not* a case of the dictionary setting itself to French (which sometimes happens inexplicably, & I fix it). I went to Word Options, Custom Dictionary, Dictionary List, and Edit Word List.