If you’re convinced Excel is just about numbers, wait until you show a client a spreadsheet with a few words misspelled in column headings. It’ll quickly sink in that spreadsheets are multifaceted reporting documents. It pays to get the figures and words right. Excel helps prevent embarrassing text errors. The following tips help you solve some common challenges that keep you from getting every word right in an efficient way.

Sometimes I notice I’ve misspelled a word such as “Mondya,” but Excel doesn’t flag it with a wavy red line as Microsoft Word does. It also doesn’t flag grammatical errors.

Microsoft Office applications share a lot of the same features, but the instant flagging of typos isn’t one of them. While Word and PowerPoint alert you immediately to misspelled words, Excel can’t do this. Additionally, it doesn’t have grammar-checking capabilities.

I want a quick and easy, check-all-the-text-at-once approach.

That, Excel can do. To check the spelling in an entire worksheet, click any cell and press F7. This produces the kind of spell-check dialog box you're probably familiar with from word processors. You can choose to ignore a flagged word's spelling, ignore all occurrences, change the noted occurrence to the spelling Excel recommends, or change all occurrences to the recommended spelling.

My worksheet includes a lot of comments on cells, and I’m not sure they’re being checked.

The standard Excel spell check you initiate by pressing F7 checks comments as part of the job. When the spelling dialog box flags a word in a comment, the comment box moves into view on the main screen so you know where Excel is looking.

The spell check brought up a word I don’t see anywhere in the worksheet.

The word probably appears in a comment that’s hidden. Excel checks words in these comments, but because the word’s source doesn’t appear on-screen, it’s easy to get confused. To make the spell check easier to follow, make all comments visible before starting the check. To show comments, go to the Review tab and click Show All Comments.

One of my formulas produces a message of “Exceeds Standerd,” and Excel didn’t catch the misspelled word.

That’s because formulas and any text that formulas produce are not part of the standard spell-check regimen. You’ll have to manually review your spelling in those places.

I spell-checked my worksheet, but when I started working on other tabbed worksheets, I found some misspellings.

Spell checks apply only to the active worksheet. To check another one, click its tab and press F7.

Spell-checking my entire worksheet takes several minutes, and I really only need to check the block of names I just added in a salary report.

You can limit Excel’s spell check to a defined section of the worksheet by holding down the mouse button and dragging over a range of cells. Press F7 to start the spell check. To check an entire row or column, click the row or column heading before starting the spell check.

I have to tell Excel to ignore the spelling of our company name. I’m worried that someday I’ll automatically click Ignore Once when the company’s name is spelled wrong.

The solution to both of these concerns is adding your company’s name to the Microsoft Office dictionary. When spell check flags the word, click Add To Dictionary. From now on, every Office program will skip your company’s name when it’s spelled correctly and flag it when it deviates from your dictionary entry. The shared Office dictionary works throughout the program suite, which means you can enter a word once and count on it being checked correctly in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

For words you type often (and misspell the same way often), you can set Excel to correct the word automatically when you type it. The first time spell check flags the word, click the correct spelling in the list of suggestions and choose AutoCorrect. This works with words you’ve added to the dictionary, too, letting you automatically correct a common misspelling of your company’s name.