Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Hiding Grammar Errors.

Hiding Grammar Errors

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 1, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


Word includes a feature that checks up on the spelling and grammar in your document as you type. You've seen the results—the red and green squiggly underlines that mark spelling and grammar errors that you may want to correct as you are typing.

The error marking can be bothersome to some people. These people would rather differentiate between the creative phase of writing and the more manual phase of editing and polishing the document. To these people the squiggly underlines are distracting. If you want to turn off the green squiggly underlines, you can follow these steps:

  1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
  2. Make sure the Spelling & Grammar tab is selected. (See Figure 1.)
  3. Figure 1. The Spelling & Grammar tab of the Options dialog box.

  4. Make sure the Hide Grammatical Errors in This Document check box is selected.
  5. Click on OK.

Any existing green squiggly underlines should disappear. In order to use Word's grammar checking feature you will now explicitly need to explicitly start the process by choosing the proper option from the Tools menu.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (906) 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: Hiding Grammar Errors.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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