How to Add or Remove Words in Spell Checking Dictionary in Windows 10

You may be aware of the Windows Spell Check feature which supports auto-correction and highlighting misspelled words which help in improving your writing skills. Now, whenever you’re typing in Microsoft Edge, OneNote, Mail App etc you will see that a misspelled word will be highlighted by a red line, but it’s possible that this word may not be misspelled as it can be a word that is not recognized by the Windows Dictionary. In such cases, you can easily add the word to the dictionary or ignore it, as explained below.

Add or Remove Words in Spell Checking Dictionary in Windows 10

How to Add or Remove Words in Spell Checking Dictionary in Windows 10

You can simply right-click on the misspelled word and add it to the custom dictionary so that in the future it’s not highlighted. You also have the option to simply Ignore the word.

But what if you added a wrong or misspelled word accidentally? Well, adding a word to a dictionary is very easy but removing it from Windows Dictionary is not, as Windows 10 doesn’t provide any easy way to undo the changes. Anyway, without wasting any time let’s see How to Add or Remove Words in Spell Checking Dictionary in Windows 10 with the help of the below-listed tutorial.

Method 1: Add Highlighted Misspelled Words to Spell Checking Dictionary

When you type in Outlook, OneNote or any web browser you will see that words which are misspelled will be highlighted with a red wavy line. But if that particular is correct then chances are that this word is not recognized by Windows Dictionary and you can simply add this word to the Dictionary in order for Windows to make better typing suggestions. Right-click on a highlighted misspelled word and then select Add to dictionary. That’s it you have successfully added Highlighted Misspelled Words to the Spell Checking Dictionary.

Add Highlighted Misspelled Words to Spell Checking Dictionary

Also Read: Quillbot vs Grammarly: Which is the Better Writing Tool?

Method 2: Add or Remove Words in Spell Checking Dictionary in Windows 10

1.Open the File Explorer than in address bar copy and paste the following:

%AppData%\Microsoft\Spelling

Navigate to Spell Checking Dictionary in Windows 10

2.Now double-click on the folder (language-specific dictionaries) for example en-US, en-IN etc for the language you want to customize the dictionary for.

3.Open notepad then drag and drop the default.dic file from the above folder into notepad. Or you can simply double-click on the file and select Notepad from the Open With dialog box.

Double-click on the folder (language-specific dictionaries) for example en-US, en-IN

4.Now inside notepad add the words that you no longer wanted to be highlighted as misspelled or you can simply remove any misspelled words which you may have added accidentally.

Add the words that you no longer wanted to be highlighted as misspelled

Note: Only add one word per line and note that the words which you add are case-sensitive which means you may need to add the words in both lowercase and uppercase letters.

5.Once you are done with the changes simply click on File from the Notepad menu then click on Save. Or simply press Ctrl + S to save the changes.

From Notepad menu click on File then select Save As

This is how you Add or Remove Words in Spell Checking Dictionary in Windows 10 but if you need to reset the dictionary then follow the next method.

Method 3: Reset and Clear All Words in Spell Checking Dictionary

1.Again navigate to the following location using the above method:

%AppData%\Microsoft\Spelling

Navigate to Spell Checking Dictionary in Windows 10

2.Open the folder (for example en-US, en-IN etc) for the language for which you want to customize the dictionary for.

3.Right-click on default.dic file then select Delete.

Reset and Clear All Words in Spell Checking Dictionary

4.Reboot your PC to save changes.

5.Once you add any word to the dictionary using “Add to dictionary” from the context menu, the default.dic file will be automatically created.

Also Read: How Do I Save a Clean Copy of a Word Document After Track Changes

Method 4: View and Clear Dictionary in Windows 10 Settings

1.Press Windows Key + I to open Settings then click on Privacy icon.

From Windows Settings select Privacy

2.From the left hand, menu click on Speech, inking, & typing.

3.Now in the right window pane click on “View user dictionary” link.

Click on View user dictionary link under Speech, inking, & typing

4.Here you can see all the words added to user dictionary and you can also clear dictionary by clicking on Clear dictionary button.

Clear dictionary by clicking on Clear dictionary button

5.Close Settings then reboot your PC.

Where are Added, Excluded and Auto Correct Words stored in Windows 10?

For each language Windows 10 stores user-specific dictionaries that hold the content for Added, Excluded, and AutoCorrect word lists which are located under the folder %AppData%\Microsoft\Spelling.

1. Browse to this folder you will see language-specific dictionaries, for example, en-IN or en-US, etc,

2. Simply double-click on en-US and you will see

  • default.dic (Added word lists)
  • default.exec (Excluded word lists)
  • and default.ACL (AutoCorrect word lists).

Recommended: Allow or Prevent Devices to Wake Computer in Windows 10

That’s it you have successfully learned How to Add or Remove Words in Spell Checking Dictionary in Windows 10 but if you still have any queries regarding this tutorial then feel free to ask them in the comments section.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *