Microsoft Word 2007 introduced several new error checking features to help users create professional, polished documents. These tools automatically check documents for spelling, grammar, style, and formatting issues.
Spelling and Grammar Checking
The main error checking features in Word 2007 are spelling and grammar checking. These tools are enabled by default, underlining potential errors with red squiggly lines (spelling) and green squiggly lines (grammar) as you type.
You can right-click on an underlined word to see suggested corrections. Or you can press F7 to run a full spell check on the document. This brings up the Spelling and Grammar dialog box.
Key Spelling and Grammar Features
- Check spelling as you type or run full check later
- Grammar checking alongside spelling
- Customizable spell check dictionaries
- Add words to dictionary easily
- Options to ignore or correct errors
- Support for multiple languages
Style and Formatting Checking
New to Word 2007 is increased intellisense around styling documents professionally. The Styles groups on the Home and Page Layout tabs help you apply consistent formatting across headings, text, tables, and lists.
For example, you can define a custom heading style including font, size, color, alignment, spacing, etc. Then apply it to all headings in one click. If you later change the style definition, it updates throughout.
Key Style and Formatting Features
- Quick Styles gallery for headings, text, tables, lists
- Create/manage custom styles
- Contextual formatting suggestions
- Find and replace styles
- Style inspector
Accessibility Checking
Another new automated check is the accessibility checker, found under the Review tab. It looks for issues that could prevent those with disabilities from being able to read your document.
For example, missing alt text for images, improper heading order, inadequate color contrast, and more. Each issue has helpful info on why it matters and how to address it.
Key Accessibility Features
- Identify accessibility issues
- Detailed help for fixing problems
- Warnings for images, tables, color contrast, headings, and more
- Improve readability for the visually impaired
Compatibility Checking
Submitting documents to journals, publishers, conferences, or collaborators means you need them to be compatible with different versions of Word.
The compatibility checker finds issues that could cause layout changes or formatting issues for those using older or newer versions of Word. For example, custom spacing or page settings that don’t translate well.
Key Compatibility Features
- Find compatibility issues
- Identify which versions of Word are affected
- Detailed help for addressing problems
- Maintain layout integrity across Word versions
Smart Lookup
New in Word 2007 is Smart Lookup, which lets you select text, right-click, and choose “Smart Lookup” to view contextual information from the web. This makes it easy to research topics without leaving Word.
Smart Lookup provides definitions, related information, media, related words, quotes, and more. For example, looking up a medical term could show you images from medical journals or health organization websites.
Tell Me
Tell Me is another new feature that makes it easy to find Word commands. Rather than digging through menus and ribbons, you simply type words related to what you want to do. Tell Me shows you the relevant commands.
For example, typing “image” brings up commands like:
- Insert Pictures
- Image Options
- Wrap Text Around Picture
- Position Object
- Edit Alt Text
This allows you to easily access Word’s robust functionality whether you know the exact terminology or not.
Conclusion
In summary, Microsoft Word 2007 introduced several error checking tools to help create professional documents:
- Spelling and grammar checking
- Styling and formatting suggestions
- Accessibility issue identification
- Compatibility checking across Word versions
- Smart Lookup provides contextual research
- Tell Me finds commands easily
These automated features catch errors, provide advanced formatting options, make Word 2007 documents more accessible, maintain compatibility, enable quick on-the-fly research, and help users find the commands they need.
By taking advantage of these robust error checking and assisted writing capabilities, Word 2007 users can produce high-quality, polished documents with confidence.
