In the last week, the spell check option in my Office 365 Outlook has changed from the right click to the left click. I am assuming this was some kind of update to Office. The change hasn't occurred in any of my desktop office programs. The change is driving me insane; I keep clicking the wrong button and my work hence is taking longer. The is compounded by the fact I have to remember that other office programs still use right click so its doesn't matter which program I'm in now I click the wrong button first!! This may seen insignificant but it greatly affects the usability of the product. Right click has always been for spell-checking; not just in Office programs but generally through most software. Please advise how I can return Office 365 outlook to right click for spelling. I have attached a screen print showing my current menu options for right vs left click. Thank you for your help.

Holy cow yes!!This is driving me mad. Microsoft, spell check has been in right-click context menu for DECADES, and not just in word but EVERYWHERE. There is NO REASON to move the spell check menu to left click, in fact, there are many reasons against it!- It has been in the right click menu with no issues for decades- What if I want to place my cursor inside the word to edit it without a menu coming up- There is no common software that I am aware of that brings up a context menu with a left click- All your current desktop and online applications have spell check in the right click menu, meaning word online experience is FRACTURED. As I'm typing this I am correcting spelling with right click. When I move to a different program it will be right click, when I go to word on desktop it will be right click. - This change isn't intuitive, it doesn't improve anything, it doesn't solve an existing problem, it doesn't make the users life easier, it doesn't make the IT managers life better, it causes headache, confusion, frustration, and an overall distaste for your products. This is not some woke change like Apple removing the headphone jack. This is not for the betterment of future iterations of Word. This is not even change for the sake of change, it LITERALLY WOULD HAVE COST YOU NOTHING TO NOT CHANGE THIS. In fact, it probably cost you thousands to change this because now you have to moderate all the complaints from your users, pay someone to make the change for no reason, pay someone to QA the change (although no one probably did because WTF would they say, "yeah I think this is a great change." without using it to try and type a document for longer than 10 seconds without loosing their mind because of the missing context menu and the little popup in their face every time), you have to pay to host the content of all the complaints, and I can almost guarantee (unless you foolishly double-down on this hideous oversigt/idiotic design decision) that you will be paying someone to change it back to the way it was.Fire the designer that came up with this change. Fire the Project Manager who decided it was even remotely a good idea to toy with the idea and throw it up on the project board, fire the QA team who didn't stand up for their honor and tell you this was an awful change, and fire the dev that pushed this garbage to production. Swallow your pride, this was a bad change, we all make mistakes.As the old proverb goes, "no need to reinvent the wheel and turn it into a cube."

Megan4123 Holy mother of god - how do we change this back??!!

Megan4123 This is driving me crazy too. I write mails in 3 different languages, and it was so easy to right click, select my language and then correct things. Especially when i write mails that has more than just one language in the same email. This new left click system is utterly... sorry for the bad language... moronic. It makes no sense at all, plus every time i want to edit a word by clicking on it with left click, well what do you know the "correction" menu opens and hides all the other words around. The hiding other words is actually not the problem. The fact that a menu opens when i didn't ask for it is what is annoying me! Now i'm wasting time writing my mails in a text document, correcting them with the NORMAL right click like it has been for the past 10 year at least, and then copy pasting it into my email to then send it.And then i waste time trying to figure out how to disable it, get annoyed because of course settings are hidden behind 3 different menus, can't fix it. So i google it to then figure out that i can either disable it completely and have no correction AT ALL, or have the illogical lame one that you guys have made with left click. But hey, here on this site i can right click on words, select my language and correct them accordingly.Why change it in one place of your site but not the other? The more and more i use outlook, the more and more i start to think that you guys actually have nothing to do. Nothing to fix, no new good ideas that improve usability (probably because it was perfectly fine as it was before) so you just start making up things to make and change for no reason other than having something to do and therefore keeping your job.You make a broken feature, now you have to fix it. Work. Keep your paycheck.You don't make broken features, nothing to fix. No work. Find a new job. Whoever is working for you guys and getting a big paycheck for these types of ideas should be fired because they clearly have no idea what they are doing (other than making bad decisions and keep their job to find new ideas to fix their bad decision, with new bad decisions). Hire me, i'll do it for free. Actually it's pretty simple, outlook, roll back to how you were 5 years ago. All the new fancy features that are useless and broken and just in the way, weren't there back then. And great. Now i just spent 10 mins writing this. Such a waste of time, so frustrating, so **bleep** illogical! Stop it damnit! Edit: Funny, i can write damnit, but if you remove the it at the end, the word gets "bleeped" out. Hahaha. 10/10 microsoft.

Megan4123 Is there a fix yet as this is really annoying!

Megan4123 I totally agree. As Peter Griffin (aka Family Guy dad) would say, that's what really grinds my gears. Come on Microsoft, why would you buck the trend of a Global user interaction pattern. Really? Given that Brian and Stewie from Microsoft helped you launch Office 2013, maybe you should be getting advice from them as opposed to your own designers?

Outlook - Spellcheck moved from right click to left click

42 Replies

Ben198111111
Copper Contributor
Mar 10, 2023
This is infuriating and totally obtuse by MS. What next, swap the space bar and shift key functions just 'because'? Awful.
Dale_WTCX
Copper Contributor
Nov 10, 2022
I lose an inordinate amount of time per week to this broken idea.

As every other poster has said, there is no reason to deviate from such a well established convention.

(While posting this comment, I had a popup asking me for feedback... just read the comments!)
lindzb
Copper Contributor
Jul 12, 2022
This seems like a very unnecessary and annoying change for your users. There is no positive feedback here regarding this matter.

MS- Could you please at least offer the option for people to change to back to the universal option of right-click for spelling corrections?

It's a major headache and a slowdown for productivity when a change like that is made. There is no reason to go against the grain for a things that's already universally agreed upon. It's annoying and makes me frustrated that my employer uses your software.
Common_Sense_Please
Copper Contributor
May 10, 2022
On the bright side, they've provided a perfect incentive to try something - anything - else. No one in their right mind wants to use a product where the developers replaced the universal right click spell check function for, of all things, an emoji option. Add to this the fact that they could have simply made the ever important emoji option a left click function. Kids literally running the show.
- RWFIDM
  Copper Contributor
  May 11, 2022
  Common_Sense_Please Sorry it's slowed my productivity down. When the rest of the entire software universe uses rt click, this is not good UX
RWFIDM
Copper Contributor
Apr 12, 2022
Absolutely ridiculous that MS moved it. Completely screws everything up. Microsoft: Change it back.
Mr_Boggs
Copper Contributor
Dec 31, 2021
This is a major annoyance across Microsoft's brand of products. It seems like a small thing, but it is very distracting and counter intuitive. I gave it a shot, but I'm once again moving away from Edge as my primary web browser and am looking at alternative office software solutions. Since Office is no longer working for me, it is a good time to explore new alternatives.
MikeBitsch
Copper Contributor
Nov 13, 2021
Yes, a million times please FIX this, who was the brain trust who thought changing the which mount button brought up the spell checker to be different than literately EVERY application including the MS desktop apps?
Jan_Fucik
Copper Contributor
Oct 06, 2021
So how the f*** do I turn it off? It's so annoying and I really don't wan to disable my spelling.
ShopAdmin
Copper Contributor
Oct 05, 2021
Ha ha ha ha ha, I really feel for you......I am using a customer's office 365 account and I feel your pain.....what a total disaster by MS
I guess this is because there is now a left handed person writing the code and we have to comply with the minority....the fact that my left handed partner has never had a problem.....
This is typical MS - break the most basic things......that have been used for over 30 years by the majority!!!
Visual Studio is now joked as Visual Bugs - we spend more time reporting bugs that developing....seems a common "feature" of new MS products these days.....
I doubt if the spelling will ever change back - MS never admit they are wrong
loganrb
Copper Contributor
Aug 05, 2021
I made an account specifically to bump this thread, thanks for pointing this issue out, it's driving me crazy!Megan4123

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Outlook - Spellcheck moved from right click to left click

42 Replies

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