Popup says "Word hyphenation feature is not available" even though it is working fine

Anonymous
2021-05-21T10:47:45+00:00

When I open a document in which automatic hyphenation is being used, a few seconds later I get a pop-up that says: 

'Word hyphenation feature is not available. Run the Microsoft Office Setup program, install this feature, then try again'

I press OK and it goes away. As far as I can tell, hyphenation is actually working fine but the message is a little worrying. 

It is also unhelpful, because I do not have a 'Microsoft Office Setup program" to run. 

If I Google it (or Bing it!), I am advised (by this site amongst others) to reinstall. I tried that: a complete download and reinstall from scratch. There was no 'setup' required after installation, it just ran OK.  

It made no difference to the pop-up. 

How do I

a) reassure myself that here is nothing wrong with hyphenation? 

b) make this pop-up go away? 

I am running Word for Mac version 16.9 (21050901) on MacOS Catalina version 10.15.7.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
Stefan Blom 357.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2021-05-21T19:53:40+00:00

Try selecting all the text and then disable the "Do not check spelling or grammar" setting for the selection.

Of course, it is possible that "Do not check spelling or grammar" or an unsupported language is hiding inside a header or footer which currently isn’t visible.

Was this answer helpful?

5 people found this answer helpful.
0 comments

8 additional answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Stefan Blom 357.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2021-05-25T07:36:45+00:00

    No way! That would disable all my spelling and grammar chekcs.

    My suggestion was to turn off the "Do not check spelling..." option, for affected text. Doing so will ensure that spellchecking is enabled.

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2021-05-21T19:35:33+00:00

    I already known that: it is UK English for most of the document with some citations in US English, German, Dutch, French, Italian and Spanish. The spelling and grammar checks work OK in those languages, so the proofing tools are installed. German is definitely hyphenating correctly. Extracts in the other languages are rather short to tell if hyphenation is taking place, but it in not incorrect.

    It's a 100,000 word 300 page document, so I am not able to test every word separately!

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Stefan Blom 357.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2021-05-25T08:06:57+00:00

    You can use Find & Replace (Ctrl+H) to search for ”Do not check spelling…” which is a character attribute.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Stefan Blom 357.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2021-05-21T19:01:22+00:00

    As a starting point, select a single word and check which language Word has applied to it. (Sorry, I do not have access to Word for Mac, so I can't give specific instructions.)

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments