Forum Discussion
anoneditor
Jul 23, 2021Brass Contributor
New spell check highlight--how to disable
I've noticed a new red highlight (not the red squiggly underline) connected to spell check in Word. It only appears when you mouse over a word that has been flagged by spell check. When you click on ...
anoneditor
Jul 29, 2021Brass Contributor
Hi Lenka_Kerumova, thanks, this is helpful! I did some Googling about context menus as you suggested, and I realized a key omission in my description above. The typical context menu that includes spellcheck options comes up with you right click a spellcheck-flagged word. You can indeed customize this menu (I had no idea). However, I have no problem with this menu and I use it all the time. The highlight that I am talking about appears when I mouse over a spellcheck-flagged word, and the menu pops up when I *left* click the highlight. This is why it is so annoying--there are a million reasons to left click a word (like, I dunno, editing it) that a popup gets in the way of.
Making this distinction allowed me to find many other forum posts complaining of this issue. Apparently it was introduced so that those using words on tablets or other devices without a right click function still have access to spelling corrections. Which makes sense, but it should be possible to disable this feature if you are not on one of those devices. I did not find any solutions, except that you can get around the pop up on windows by alt+left click on or mac by command+shift+left click on a mac (obviously these are far from ideal). It seems that right now there is no way to disable or edit the left click spellcheck context menu. But, please, Microsoft, create one!
Making this distinction allowed me to find many other forum posts complaining of this issue. Apparently it was introduced so that those using words on tablets or other devices without a right click function still have access to spelling corrections. Which makes sense, but it should be possible to disable this feature if you are not on one of those devices. I did not find any solutions, except that you can get around the pop up on windows by alt+left click on or mac by command+shift+left click on a mac (obviously these are far from ideal). It seems that right now there is no way to disable or edit the left click spellcheck context menu. But, please, Microsoft, create one!
MoMaier
Nov 11, 2021Iron Contributor
You may be right about that this new "smart" feature in a long line of infuriating updates has been developed with users on tablets with touchscreens and without physical keyboards in mind. As precisely one of those users with a Windows tablet who regularly likes to work with the keyboard off, let me add my voice to those of the dissatisfied. I for one certainly do not appreciate yet another stupid pop-up jumping in my face and getting in the way of things (for the already mentioned reasons: takes time to load, gets in the way of functionality and obscures following lines, is completely redundant if I get the same thing in the context menu with a simple right-click). Curiously, despite this ingeniuity specifically implemented to supposedly help the likes of me, the exact opposite is the case. I can't simply dismiss the pop-up with a keyboard shortcut (yet another one I have to memorize), since I have no keyboard. Instead, it forces yet another step upon me, since tapping on underlined text now summons the **bleep** pop-up, which I need to first dismiss with another tap elsewhere. After this, automatically the entire word is now selected, so I need another tap to de-select (Which was annoying enough before MS added the pop-up). Then the cursor lands either at the start of the word or the end, not where I actually tap - no, I now have to tap and drag the cursor by its stupid touchscreen handle to where I want to edit. And all of this, because someone arrogantly thinks I can't be expected to do a long-press for a right-click, apparently. MS Office, which worked pretty flawlessly on Surface-like devices during the heydey of Windows 8.1 and early Win 10 has gone to utter crap.
The very least those arrogant clowns at MS could do is give us an option to disable imposed functionality if it simply does not work for certain use cases. I really don't care if the Devs are super proud of their newest concoctions; if it does not work for me, I need to be able to undo it. But that, quite obviously, is not MS's style these days (just for reference, look at the debacle with "modern comments", which has professional editors, writers, educators and possibly anyone else who actually uses the comment function to earn a living up in arms - after months of despair, they can now be "temporarilly" disabled). So yeah, people please vent your frustration, hopefully MS will finally learn that they can't simply push any nonsense without any option to toggle it off.
The very least those arrogant clowns at MS could do is give us an option to disable imposed functionality if it simply does not work for certain use cases. I really don't care if the Devs are super proud of their newest concoctions; if it does not work for me, I need to be able to undo it. But that, quite obviously, is not MS's style these days (just for reference, look at the debacle with "modern comments", which has professional editors, writers, educators and possibly anyone else who actually uses the comment function to earn a living up in arms - after months of despair, they can now be "temporarilly" disabled). So yeah, people please vent your frustration, hopefully MS will finally learn that they can't simply push any nonsense without any option to toggle it off.