Why won't Microsoft Word auto-correct the word THE?
July 5, 2011 8:32 PM   Subscribe

Why won't Microsoft Word auto-correct the word THE?

I am running Microsoft Word 2008 on a MacBook Pro. I am doing a ton of typing this summer and auto-correct (most of the time) is really useful. I hate typing and seeing all those underlined red words. I fix as I go. Auto-correct fixes all my common spelling and capitalization mistakes except my frequent error (when typing quickly) of typing "THe" instead of "The." I constantly have to manually correct it. I have set and reset auto-correct over and over to correct that particular version of "the", but it still won't correct it. This is the only word it won't fix. Does this happen to anyone else? How did you fix it?
posted by Sylvia Plath's terrible fish to Computers & Internet (15 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Go to the Review tab and click on the Spelling and Grammer button
Click on the "Options..." button in the lower left part of the Spelling and Grammer pop-up
It should take you to the Proofing tab.
Uncheck 'Ignore words in UPPERCASE' (assuming it's checked)
posted by theNeutral at 8:39 PM on July 5, 2011


There's a couple of things - if it's all caps that's the problem, you probably have "ignore all caps" checked in your spellcheck options. If it's "THe" then it's more likely that you accidentally added it to your dictionary.

Try typing "THIS" and "THis" and "TEH" and see what auto-correct does.
posted by SMPA at 8:40 PM on July 5, 2011


Response by poster: Thank you for the quick responses. I unchecked the 'Ignore Words in Uppercase" option but it still wont' correct THe. It will correct THis to This, ANd to And, THen to Then - but not THe.
posted by Sylvia Plath's terrible fish at 8:54 PM on July 5, 2011


Response by poster: It will also change ThE to The, but not THe (the error I actually make).
posted by Sylvia Plath's terrible fish at 8:56 PM on July 5, 2011


You can add your own autocorrect corrections, where you can tell Word to replace THe with The. I'm not familiar with the Mac version, but the instructions for doing it appear to be here.
posted by blue mustard at 9:18 PM on July 5, 2011


Response by poster: Thanks - but I've already instructed Word to replace THe with The several times and it didn't work. I just gave it one last shot, but nope.
posted by Sylvia Plath's terrible fish at 9:26 PM on July 5, 2011


Hmm... Word 2010 for Windows has something called "autocorrect exceptions" which makes an exception for THe. Unfortunately, I've tried searching, but can't figure out if there's an equivalent option in Word for Mac. Do you see any "autocorrect exceptions" button anywhere in the tools?
posted by blue mustard at 9:48 PM on July 5, 2011


If you do have an AutoCorrect function in your version of Word, this article may help in fixing the problem. Apparently there's a difference between adding a word to the Don't Correct list and removing it from the AutoCorrect one.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:59 PM on July 5, 2011


Word 2008 for Mac seems to have roughly the same process as Word 2007 for Windows. Go to Word menu > Preferences > Authoring and Proofing Tools / Autocorrect > Exceptions. Then look for THe. I hope it's there!
posted by mittens at 4:29 AM on July 6, 2011


Response by poster: I found the exceptions tab but THe (or any variation of the) is not included.
posted by Sylvia Plath's terrible fish at 5:20 AM on July 6, 2011


If you can't get Word to auto-correct it, instead of correcting as you go along, wait until the end of the document and then do a global replace.
posted by essexjan at 5:26 AM on July 6, 2011


If it's "THe" then it's more likely that you accidentally added it to your dictionary.

Have you looked into this possibility yet? I haven't used recent versions of Word for Mac, but there should be somewhere in your preferences that you can view and edit your custom spell-check dictionary.
posted by teg at 6:45 AM on July 6, 2011


There is also a "Correct TWo INitial CApitals" checkbox on the "Autocorrect Tab. Perhaps the two rules are interferring somehow. Try removing your custom dictionary entry "THe" (you can always re-enter it) and tick this box.
posted by Herodios at 8:20 AM on July 6, 2011


Response by poster: It is not in my custom dictionary.
posted by Sylvia Plath's terrible fish at 2:07 PM on July 6, 2011


Response by poster: Metafilter: Stumped
posted by Sylvia Plath's terrible fish at 3:43 PM on July 7, 2011


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