Spell-Checking

• 1). Click "Tools" on the OpenOffice Writer menu and click "Spelling and Grammar." Or press "F7" on the keyboard. The "Spelling" dialog box will open.
  
  
• 2). Click the "Text language" drop-down list if you want to select a different language other than the default. You can choose from several variations of English and French, and Spanish.
  
  
• 3). Choose an action for every word found in the document that is not in the OpenOffice Writer dictionary. You can choose "Ignore" to ignore a word, "Add" to include it to the dictionary or "Change" to replace it with a suggested word from the "Suggestions" list. If you want OpenOffice to automatically correct the misspelled word into the correct one, choose "AutoCorrect."
  
  
• 4). Click "Close" when you are finished spell-checking to return to the OpenOffice document.
  
  

Spell-Checking Options

• 1). Click "Spelling and Grammar" on the "Tools" menu or hit "F7." Click "Options..." to open the "Options" dialog box.
  
  
• 2). Select the dictionaries you want OpenOffice Writer to use under "User-defined dictionaries." You can also click "New" to make a new dictionary or click "Edit" to modify an existing one. If you are not sure which dictionary contains what terms, or what you want to do, leave them checked.
  
  
• 3). Review the settings in the "Options" area. Keep "Check spelling as you type" and "Check grammar as you type" selected if you want OpenOffice to notify you of misspelling as you are typing.
  
  
• 4). Check each box for uppercase words, words containing numbers, special "regions" (such as text in an OpenOffice drawing) and the capitalization of words if you want these spell-checked as well.
  
  
• 5). Check "Hyphenate without inquiry" if you want OpenOffice to hyphenate words without prompting you first. If you leave this unchecked, OpenOffice will notify you when it finds a word it cannot recognize.
  
  
• 6). Double-click "Minimum number of characters for hyphenation" and set the minimum character length of a word before OpenOffice applies hyphenation to it. You can leave this and the minimum number of characters before and after the hyphen at their defaults.
  
  
• 7). Check "Hyphenate special regions" if you want to apply hyphenation to regions like drawings.
  
  
• 8). Click "OK" and then click "Close."