Hi

I work for a school and we have been asked to provide a laptop for an exam with spellchecker and thesaurus disabled. Now we have got it so no spelling mistakes are highlighted or auto corrected, the problem is that the F7 shortcut key is still working. Its not offering any suggestions for spelling mistakes but it is identifying mistakes. We have removed the proofing tool in the setup but still it comes up when you press F7. Basically we were wondering if there is a registry setting that we need to change to completely remove this feature.

Thanks

• Go to TOOLS > CUSTOMIZE > TOOLBARS > KEYBOARD
• Click on ALL COMMANDS in the CATEGORIES
• Find ToolsProofing in the Commands window.
• In the Current Keys: section, you will see F7...click on it to highlight it.
• Click on REMOVE button.
• Close windows and restart Word.

Thanks for that, that's just what we needed, many thanks.

Here's another easier way:

Pull down the "Tools" menu and scroll down to the bottom. Click on "Options." This pulls up a window with a number of control tabs.

Click on the "Spelling and Grammar" tab to open the controls.

At the top of the "Spelling" list, uncheck the box next to “Check spelling as you type.”

Click the "OK" button to apply the changes to your document.

Sorry Karma, but that doesn't disable the Grammar Checker tool, it disables the automated prompting that appears onscreen to indicate you've made a mistake. I believe the poster has already done what you suggest and found the student could still manually fire up the spelling and grammar checker by pressing F7, which is why he described this as his problem.

Even uninstalling the proofing tools doesn't do the job completely. You have to disable the hotkey using my instruction above, and then remove the option from the Tools menu as well to be complete.

This is critical in testing environments where spelling and grammar will be graded but computers allowed for the test itself.

What you can do is go to:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\PROOF

And make the following files inaccessible by renaming them:

MSGR3EN
MSSPELL3

These two files are needed by the spellchecker and grammar checker, and the functions will not work without them.

Note: make sure you have already run Word once on the log-in in question, otherwise Word will try to reinstall these functions! The kids should also be on 'user' type account.

And don't forget to change the files back - we have a little batch file for making these changes back and forth. These should be run from the root of C:

OFF:

c:
cd Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\proof
move MSGR3EN.LEX SGR3EN.LEX
move MSSPELL3.DLL SSPELL3.DLL

Back ON:

c:
cd Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\proof
move SGR3EN.LEX MSGR3EN.LEX
move SSPELL3.DLL MSSPELL3.DLL

There is another way to do this. This way makes it so you don't have to disable anything in word, edit the registry and it also prevents the students from accessing other applications, like powerpoint, and using the spell check feature there.

1. Install the Office Suite like you normally would.
2. Once installed go to Add/Remove programs
3. Find your install of Office 2003, select it and hit "Change"
4. The Office 2003 Setup menu will appear with 3 options, select "Add or remove Features" and click Next
5. Make sure "Choose advanced customization of applications" is the only thing checked and click next.
6. Expand the option that says "Office Shared Features" and find "Proofing Tools"
7. Left Click on the gray box and select the option "Not Available"
8. Click "Update"

Note: You need to have the Office 2003 installation disk in the drive in order to uninstall the proofing tools. Also, if you want to reinstall these features you just need to go through the same process, however, you will select "Run From My Computer" under Proofing Tools.

Hope this helps!