I have so far disabled all auto-correct functions on Outlook’s “Preferences” pane, yet, it continues to auto-correct my emails resulting in very bizarre sentences. I have to review every email to make sure it hasn’t completely changed the intent of my words. I’ve called support and they say I’ve done everything correctly; it shouldn’t be auto-correcting! Microsoft hates Apple and only grudgingly makes software for us. I’m now convinced that they purposely insert glitches to make it always inferior to the Windows product (I work with both and the Win version is much better).
Outlook for Mac auto-correct nightmare
17 Saturday Dec 2011
Posted in Uncategorized
ΚΑFΕΝΕΙΟ 
I feel your pain. I work in the medical vertical and my clients are doctors. When I email them, each time I type “Dr.”, Outlook changes it to “Dry.”
Talk about frustrating.
The solution seems to be that you also need to disable the option under “Edit” -> “Spelling and Grammar” -> “Correct spelling automatically”.
You are a lifesaver peterdb. I know it is over a year after you posted this, but I have just found it. This has been a source of annoyance for quite a while. I found your response the perfect answer after a bit of internet surfing. Surely this should be an auto off feature unless you want it on, not the other way around.
Thank you. You save me minutes and minutes of annoying corrections and recorrections when Outlook keeps insisting on its wrong spelling.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU peterdb!! This was driving me INSANE, and I wasn’t expecting preferences like this to be outside of the preferences dialog. Leave it to Micro$oft to not follow the OSX paradigms set down by Apple to make sure their apps are consistently designed.
OK. Mine is now also fixed. What a nightmare… and the IT guy looked at me like I was an idiot when I asked him to fix it. Thank goodness for the internet – otherwise most of my IT issues would remain unsolved.
So how did you fix it? I have removed it from all the preferences and it still does it.
It’s not in prefs! That’s the problem.
Edit menu > Spelling and grammar > [turn off] Correct Spelling automatically. Presto.
Every time I type “I’ll”, the autocorrect capitalizes the first L so I get I’Ll. And if I type VCs, it corrects to Vcs. I’ve tried turning everything off and it still does it. Any suggestions?
i corrected the “I’ll” and “I’ve” behaviour by teaching the autocorrect to not auto capitalize after the characters I apostrophe.
To do this Outlook -> Preferences > AutoCorrect > Click the Exemptions button > First Letter Tab > Click + symbol at the bottom and add I’ (Letter I and apostrophe)
Worked for me
1) use just the apostrophe (without the I) to eliminate the capitalization of any letter following any apostrophe, not just I
2) go to the INitial CAps tab and add those 2-letter initialisms you use frequently.
So close yet so far!!! This is exactly the problem i’m having, but when i try to add words into the autocorrect dictionary, it doesn’t seem to save into the list, now what am i doing wrong? So frustrating!!!!
thank you soooo much! I was able to add just the apostrophe.
You have to hit “enter” after you add it to the list. It’s a little off-putting, because that adds a period after your apostrophe on the list, but it still works.
Unfortunately not. It seems that the reason the “autocorrect off” function has only limited effectiveness is because it’s tied into all other editing functions such as Word, various apps, etc. No apparent way to completely turn it off.
I just managed to turn it off by first going into system preferences>Languages & Text>Text. There’s a checkbox there that says, “Correct spelling automatically.” Uncheck that and then return to Outlook. Now you should be able to uncheck automatic spelling check under edit>Spelling and Grammar.
Oh how I hate Outlook for Mac
Thank you! Mark you fixed the problem for me. What a Pain in the ascot.
This version of Outlook is the single worst word processing program I have ever used and I have been using Microsoft word processing programs for over 20 years. They have disabled the ‘home’ and ‘end’ keys, the program re-formats text into different fonts and sizes randomly, you can’t separate emails with commas and if you did do so it formats all the email addresses into one long string which you cannot separate, and today when I tried typing a time into the email message it used the colon and then later an underscore as some sort of hotkey that made it so I could not continue typing but had to click back on the message box. AND it can’t even properly sort or find emails. It won’t show email addresses onscreen until you click directly on the email and tell it to show the contact so it’s difficult and frustrating to figure out the email address of a contact. Even when ‘sort by date’ is clicked it still doesn’t do it you have to make it sort by date by clicking the option twice. I HATE this program. I’m not a conspiracy theorist but I truly believe Microsoft intentionally created a bad program for Macintosh users. They had to remove these options on purpose to make it such a crappy program.
I agree 100%. It is awful. If you change the email account from which you want to send your email, it doesn’t change the signature to the one for the appropriate account. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I think this version was intended to punish Mac users.
Start with a new email. Put the cursor in the body of this new email. Then go to EDIT>SPELLING & GRAMMAR. You can uncheck “Correct Spelling Automatically” and check “Check Spelling While Typing”.
Then save the email and quit the program and restart. Any new emails will always show “Check Spelling While Typing” when you go to EDIT>SPELLING & GRAMMAR.
If you ever want to change this setting you have to start a new email, save that email, quit the program and start it up again. Otherwise, EDIT>SPELLING & GRAMMAR will show a faded “Correct Spelling Automatically” and YOU CAN’T CHANGE IT.
MicroSoft always has been idiotic and it isn’t getting any better. Why would anyone HIDE the OUTBOX? I have to open up the “PROGRESS” window, so I can stop an email by clicking on the tiny tiny X in the right side. I used to be able to just click on the OUTBOX and watch everything as different emails went out. Now, i have to click the X, go down to the bottom of the screen, double click on the OUTBOX which appears WAY DOWN THERE. Then I get to see the same window that used to be always easily available.
Idiots. Always have been.
And, by the way…there is one setting for the address and subject and another for the “body” of your email. Uncheck both the same way. Sorry, I left that out.
No. It worse. Each line has to be dealt with separately, ie, TO; CC; BCC; SUBJECT. ALL 4 LINES!!!
No. Still worse. ONLY the body will SAVE this setting for the next email that you type. Subject, and other lines won’t do it.