To All, Anne said, " In my experience most of the worst problems to crack open in Word usually originate from more than one contributor to a document and several sections being combined, with different settings to each of the sections they have contributed." The registry tweaks in the proofing tools folder previously mentioned by Linda are probably in need of doing on my PC, however, the problems with spell check and hyphenation evaporated when I deleted the entire section (which did have more than one source). I copied the contents of that section to a simple text editor then transferred it from there back into my Word document, and all is well. I did lose some font styles and other bits of formatting, but all were easily restored. Many thanks to all who helped. Ray Shapp ************************************************************* You are receiving this mail because you subscribed to mso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or MicrosoftOffice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To send mail to the group, simply address it to mso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To Unsubscribe from this group, visit the group's homepage and use the dropdown menu at the top. This will allow you to unsubscribe your email address or change your email settings to digest or vacation (no mail). //www.freelists.org/webpage/mso To be able to share files with the group, you must join our Yahoo sister group. This group will not allow for posting of emails, but will allow you to join and share problem files, templates, etc.: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MicrosoftOffice . This group is for FILE SHARING ONLY. If you are using Outlook and you see a lot of unnecessary code in your email messages, read these instructions that explain why and how to fix it: http://personal-computer-tutor.com/abc3/v28/greg28.htm *************************************************************