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Visual Studio Spell Checker – Dot Your I’s And Cross Your T’s

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Visual Studio Spell CheckerVisual Studio Spell Checker – A couple of years ago, I had to create an application  for a German company. Along with using localisation to create the German/English translation, spell checking that sucker was a challenge.

There were well over a few hundred text strings and many of these were stored in code. Nevertheless, we made it through after a long and tedious development. Suffice to say that developers aren’t the best of spell checkers.

Well now there is help on the horizon. Visual Studio Spell Checker is a free add-in available on the Visual Studio Gallery and supports Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2010.

Visual Studio Spell Checker – Get It Now

Head on over to the link above, download and install Visual Studio Spell Checker.

visual studio tools extension manager

Alternatively you can fire up your copy of Visual Studio and head on over to the Tools Menu | Extension Manager.

extension manager online gallery

Select the Online Gallery on the left of the Extension Manager screen.

install visual studio spell checker

You can then search for Visual Studio Spell Checker. It should however be close to one of the first results in the list.

download visual studio spell checker

Clicking on the download button, begins the installation process.

install visual studio spell checker

After installing Visual Studio Spell Checker, you will need to restart the IDE.

visual studio spell checker options

When Visual Studio has restarted, head on over to the Tools Menu | Spell Checker | Edit Configuration.

spell checker config

Here you can tweak the behaviour of the Spell Checker slightly.

visual studio spell checker in action

Taking Visual Studio Spell Checker for a spin is easy. Just misspell something. The tool immediately kicks into gear, underlining the misspelt word.

visual studio spell checker suggestions

You can now select the correction from the drop down suggestion list below the word.

visual studio spell checker change color

Ok, so I don’t know about you but pink just isn’t my colour. It feels too happy when I make a mistake. For a bit more doom and gloom, you can change the colour of the underline link. Navigate to Tools | Options | Environment | Fonts and Colours. Under the Display items, select the ‘Spelling Error’ item. You can then change the colour. I changed mine to black.

spell checker color changed

Back in the code window, you will see a suitably miserable underlined misspelt word.

add to dictionary

There may be times when you will want to add a word to the dictionary. This is especially true for slang or local language or terms. (And yes, my ‘misspelt’ word in the image above is actually a word used in Afrikaans and English)

add to dictonary

Simply enough, click on the correction suggestions list and Add the word to the dictionary.

user dictionary

Heading back to your Spell Checker Configuration screen, you will see all the user dictionary words you have added. From here you can easily remove a word should you want to.

This is one of the most useful extensions I have found in a long while. It works really very well and should be part of every developers Visual Studio installation. By the way, for those curious few… this is what Potjiekos looks like.

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Dirk Strauss
Dirk is a Software Developer from South Africa. He loves all things Technology and is slightly addicted to Jimi Hendrix. Apart from writing code, he also enjoys authoring books and articles. "I love sharing knowledge and connecting with people from around the world. It's the diversity that makes life so beautiful." Dirk feels very strongly that pizza is simply not complete without Tabasco, that you can never have too much garlic, and that cooking the perfect steak is an art he has almost mastered.
https://dirkstrauss.com

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