Spell Checking when Closing Documents

Carolyn is looking for a way to make sure her documents are spell-checked before they are closed. She wants to use this as a final check of the document.

There is no way to do this without using a macro, but using a macro to do this is relatively easy. Word includes some special macros that are executed at specific times. One of those macros is executed whenever a document is closed. All you need to do is make sure that the macro has the name AutoClose, and it is run whenever the document is closed.

The following provides an example of how you could construct such a macro.

Sub AutoClose()
    If Options.CheckGrammarWithSpelling Then
        ActiveDocument.CheckGrammar
    Else
        ActiveDocument.CheckSpelling
    End If
End Sub

The macro first checks to see if Word is configured to check grammar every time spelling is checked. If it is, then the CheckGrammar method is invoked; if it isn't, then the CheckSpelling method is invoked.

Recognizing that you might not want a spelling check done on every single document that you close, you could modify the macro slightly so that the user is asked if a spell-check should be done. This version of the macro provides a way for the user to provide the feedback:

Sub AutoClose()
    Dim iAnswer As Integer
    iAnswer = MsgBox("Run spell check?", _
      vbYesNo, "Spell check on closing")

    If iAnswer <> 7 Then
        If Options.CheckGrammarWithSpelling Then
            ActiveDocument.CheckGrammar
        Else
            ActiveDocument.CheckSpelling
        End If
    End If
End Sub

The only difference in this macro is that it asks the user whether to run the spell check. If the user does anything other than to answer "yes," then the spell check is skipped and the document continues closing.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (3382) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Spell Checking when Closing Documents.