How to Remove Red Lines in MS Word Documents

Disable or Turn Off Red Lines in Word

Microsoft Word includes features that can help you improve your writing experience and make fewer mistakes while typing.

One of the most important features it provides is spell check.

In your Word document, you may have noticed some red wavy lines beneath certain words, that is, how the spell check feature works.

Many new Word users may not understand what these red lines mean, but that is what we will be discussing here.

Not only that, but we will show you how to permanently ignore all red lines in Word documents if they annoy you.

What Do Red Lines Mean in Microsoft Word?

Redlining is a built-in Microsoft Word feature that indicates the removal or addition of text in a Word document. Red lines also appear when there is a spelling mistake or writing error in your Word document.

When you see a red line under a word, it usually means there is a spelling error that needs to be corrected. However, this is not always the case. Any word or phrase not in the spell-check dictionary of Microsoft Word will appear with a red underline.

Although these red lines can help you correct your grammatical errors and mistakes, they can also be quite annoying sometimes. Several technical and slang terms are missing from this dictionary. And if you use them while working on your Word document, you will get red lines even if you spell them correctly. As a result, people confident in their spelling may want to delete these unnecessary red lines from their Word documents.

How to Get Rid of Red Lines in Word

Generally, Word users would have to right-click on an underlined word and select “Ignore All” to remove red lines in Word. But this is inconvenient if your document contains a lot of red lines. Rather than going through this time-consuming process, you can delete all red lines in Microsoft Word at once.

Whether you want to remove the red lines from just the current document or all the documents you will be working on, the steps you need to take will differ. This article explains two ways to remove red lines in Word.

Method 1. Remove Red Lines from All Word Documents

You can permanently remove these red lines if you no longer want to bother with them when working on Word documents. You can accomplish this by modifying the Proofing settings in Microsoft Word. Here is how to do it:

Step 1. Assuming Microsoft Word is open on your computer, select the ‘File‘ tab from the menu bar. It will take you to the Home screen, where you can view all the recent Word documents.

Step 2. Select “Options” in the bottom-left corner of the Word menu pane.

Step 3. Within Microsoft Word, a new “Word Options” window will appear. By default, you’re in the General tab of Word Options. To make changes for spell check, select “Proofing” from the left pane.

Step 4. Under the “When correcting spelling and grammar in Word” section, you’ll find several checkboxes. Uncheck the options “Check spelling as you type” and “Frequently confused words.” Click “OK” to confirm and save your changes.

So there you have it. Unchecking the grammar boxes will also remove the green underlines from your Word document. In any case, you will no longer see any red underlines in your Word documents.

Method 2. Remove Red Lines from the Current Word Document Only

This method might be helpful for those working on Word documents that contain various technical terms that are not in the spell-check dictionary. Here’s how to remove all red lines from your current Word document.

Step 1. After opening Microsoft Word, go to the ‘File‘ tab from the menu bar, just like in the previous method.

Step 2. Then, from the bottom-left corner of the menu pane, select ‘Options‘ to open the Word Options menu.

Step 3. On the Word Options window, select ‘Proofing‘ from the left pane, and scroll down to the bottom to create spell-check exceptions for your current document.

Step 4. Under “Exceptions For,” check the “Hide spelling errors in this document only” box, as shown in the screenshot below. Then click “OK“ to apply the changes.

Conclusion

As you can see, it is easy to turn off all the red lines in Word whenever they bother you. For a small number of people who are generally correct in their spelling, the feature causes more harm than good. If you ever change your mind, go to File > Options > Proofing and toggle the feature on or off.

We hope you learned how to remove red lines in Word. Did you remove the red lines only from your current document, or did you turn them off completely? Do you have any other suggestions for dealing with red underlines in Word? Feel free to share your thoughts, and don’t forget to leave your comments in the section below.

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