OneNote has a built-in spelling and grammar check feature. The feature is more or less the same as the one in MS Office. It’s useful to say the least but not everyone takes the neatest, most grammatically correct notes. For a lot of people, the notes they take are quick thoughts that may be rife with spelling and grammar mistakes. If you feel the proofreading feature in OneNote isn’t all that useful, you can get rid of it. Here’s how you can turn off spelling and grammar check in OneNote.
OneNote has two apps; the desktop app that is part of the MS Office Suite of apps and the UWP app that comes bundled with Windows 10. The method to turn off spelling and grammar check in OneNote for the desktop is different from that of the UWP app.
OneNote Desktop App
Open OneNote for the desktop and go to File>Options. Select the ‘Proofing’ tab in the Options window. At the very bottom is a section called ‘When correcting spelling in OneNote’. This section has two options that you have to uncheck; check spelling as you type and check grammar with spelling.
Uncheck both these options and OneNote will no longer underline spelling and grammar mistakes.
OneNote UWP App
Open the OneNote UWP app. If you search for it in Cortana or Windows Search, it is the ‘Trusted Windows Store App’.
Click the hamburger menu button at the top left. In the panel that opens on the left side of your screen, select ‘Settings’ at the very bottom. A settings panel will open on the right. Select ‘Options’ from this panel.
On the Options screen, scroll to the very bottom and turn the option proofing option Off. Close and open OneNote again. This option is exceptionally buggy and frankly, it doesn’t quite make sense why turning it ‘Off’ disables the spell check. Turning it On is what should disable spell check but it doesn’t work that way.
The OneNote UWP app has one switch for disabling both spelling and grammar checks unlike OneNote for desktop. You can also turn off spelling and grammar check in MS Word.