All recent versions of Microsoft Office Word application come with powerful spelling and grammar checking features. The spelling and grammar checks in Word are quite good, especially the grammar check tool miles ahead compared to its competitors such as Open Office.
Most native English speakers might not find the necessity of an advanced grammar checking tool in Office Word, but non-native English speakers often miss a sophisticated grammar checking tool.
Grammarly for Office Word and Outlook
Enter Grammarly, an advanced spelling and grammar checking tool for Microsoft Office Word and Outlook programs. More importantly, it’s free.
Grammarly is compatible with Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 2013, Office 2016, Office 2019, and Office 365.
In addition to spelling mistakes, the Grammarly add-in for Office Word instantly finds out and corrects over 250 types of grammatical errors (150 in the free version). For instance, if you use affect word instead of effect work in a sentence, the Grammarly add-on warns you about the grammatical error as you type.
On top of that, Grammarly can also help you enhance your vocabulary and sentences by suggesting alternative words (a premium feature).
Since it’s a free add-on for Microsoft Office Word, you might want to want to get it installed to prepare important documents.
Although it’s an excellent spelling and grammar checking tool for Word, there are some catches. The first catch is that when you enable Grammarly add-on, it turns off Word’s auto-save functionality as well as Ctrl + Z (Undo) feature. This means while composing a document, you need to save the document at regular intervals just to avoid losing your document if your PC or Word program crashes.
The second catch is that the built-in spelling and grammar checking tool will be disabled when you turn on Grammarly. This is not a deal-breaker as Grammarly is better than the default one, but some users might find it inconvenient. And the last caveat is that the free version doesn’t display all grammatical issues. You need to upgrade to the premium version to get all the features.
Install and use Grammarly with Office Word
Step 1: Visit this page, click the Download button to download the Grammarly installer for Office.
Step 2: On the home page of their website, create a free Grammarly account by typing in the required details and then click the Sign-up button to download the add-in. It’s easy.
Step 3: Run the downloaded add-in to get it installed. If you don’t want to install Grammarly add-in for Outlook or Word, please uncheck the right option during the product install.
Step 4: Once installed, launch Office Word. Please restart Word if it was running while installing Grammarly. When asked, type the Grammarly account credentials to sign-in to your Grammarly account.
Step 5: In the Word program, click the Home tab, and then click Enable Grammarly to enable the add-in.
A Grammarly tab with a bunch of options and settings will appear in Word.
Have a good day!
Sipra Choudhury says
Can Grammerly be added only in Microsoft Word document not in Outlook?
Please send instructions how to do that. If I find the free Grammerly service is a very helpful tool in writing then I may use the other services for future need. Please also mention in your response what are the other services Grammerly provides.
Thanks for looking into this matters.
Sipra Choudhury
coffee-turtle says
I use the browser add-ons of Grammerly. They are pretty good. But this caveat for Word is too much of a risk:
“Although it’s a great spelling and grammar checking tool for Word, there are some catches. The first catch is that when you enable Grammarly add-on, it turns off Word’s auto-save functionality as well as Ctrl + Z (Undo) feature. This means while composing a document, you need to save the document at regular intervals just to avoid losing your document if your PC or Word program crashes.”
I do save during writing, but having the auto-save is that little protection that I appreciate. And of course, UNDO…come on. We all need that (wish there was an UNDO button for real life). :-D
Might have to check out the paid version.