Spellcheck is not working; Editor says 0%

This happened today. Yesterday, everything was working fine. Today, spellcheck and grammar check have stopped working, and I get an "editor score 0%" message when I hit Spelling and Grammar. I have made sure my language is US English, made sure check spelling and grammar are checked under Tools (I have a Mac), have check spelling as you type and check grammar as you type selected under Word preferences.

Nothing works. I still can't get Spelling and Grammar to find mistakes, even if there are red squiggly lines under misspelled words. Please advise.

Are you saying that spellchecking has stopped working in all Word documents, new and existing ones?

Hello BookAuthor,

Thank you for confirming that the proofing language and spelling and grammar settings are already enabled.

Since Word is displaying the red underlines but Editor is not processing them, the issue may be with Editor or Word itself rather than the document’s basic proofing settings.

Here what you can try:

1. Create a new blank Word document and type several intentionally misspelled words. Then press F7 or Option+Command+L to open Editor.
2. If Editor works in the new document, copy the content from the affected document into a newly created document and test it again. This would indicate that the original document may be affected.
3. If the same issue occurs in every document, open Help > Check for Updates and install any available Word or Microsoft 365 updates. Then fully quit and reopen Word.
4. If Word is already updated, start the Mac in Safe Mode and test Word there. If Editor works in Safe Mode, an add-in or background application may be interfering with it.

Please let me know whether Editor works in a new blank document and provide your Word version and macOS version. That will help determine whether this is document-specific or an application-level issue.

Feel free reply back to this post and update me on this issue, I'll be happy to help.