SharePoint Toolbox Must Have: Word Web
Guest Author: Kerri Abraham
Spelling, either you are good at it or you’re not. I have eight years of medical transcription under my belt, and even though I can spell words like hepatosplenomegaly off the top of my head, I second guess myself every time I come across the “I before E except after C” rule. If you think about it, it’s a pretty flimsy rule, lots of words like science, society, foreign, and weird don’t follow it at all. Luckily, I have WordWeb.
WordWeb is a comprehensive one-click English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows. It can be used to look up words from almost any program, showing definitions, synonyms and related words. It includes pronunciations and usage examples, and has helpful spelling and sounds-like links. As stated on the WordWeb website
WordWeb is fabulous for many reasons, best of all; it is free – well, free only if you agree to their licensing terms, which I think are quite honorable. They require that you not take more than one round-trip flight per 12-month period in an effort to raise awareness of global greenhouse emissions. Frequent travelers should purchase the software which includes all the standard features for only $19.95.
Free is great, but after using this utility for years I would have to say it would be worth paying for because it allows you to check words anywhere; across applications, within blog posts, while creating site descriptions, list settings, column instructions. Lookup any word in nearly any format by simply ctrl + right click. It couldn’t be easier.

Occasionally I happen across text it just can’t grab, like in scanned .pdf documents, but surprisingly if the copy is good, sometimes it can still define it. In the free version, the thesaurus is rather limited and the basic dictionary doesn’t include much in the way of medical or legal terms, but the tabs across the top pane launch web searches so there is an option for anything not immediately found in the WordWeb utility.
Don’t just take my word for it, read CNET’s review and join the 6.6 million users who have already downloaded this little gem. WordWeb is always up behind the scenes, never needs to be launched, and always ready to make you look smarter (that last part can be our little secret.)
Guest Author: Kerri Abraham
Kerri Abraham is the Sharepoint Coordinator for the Revenue Cycle at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. A true out-of-the box end-user (without Sharepoint designer) she focuses on adoption and education through the creation of extensive training and procedure manuals, and significantly aids in overall work efficiency for all the staff she supports.
This is really nice… like a built in spellcheck, right on top of SharePoint. Never heard of it. — Mark
WordWeb is awesome! Thanks!
I think it’s worth noting this probably doesn’t work as well with .pdf’s because sometimes these are simply images. There are methods to convert them to OCR Text. You have to have the Standard version of Adobe though.
Google Chrome has the dictionary OOTB. It works simliar to MS Word. It’s not as elaborate in regards to synonyms, but I’m sure the thesaurus extension has already been built.
The WordWeb utility works across any platform, so even within SQL database you can check spelling. My point about the .pdf files was that even with it being an image, it can still sometimes define a word, even in scanned documents, which I find rather impressive. Having it work across applications is the selling point for me, it is available everywhere, not just through IE.
Having it work on *any* application is a BIG PLUS. I must’ve skimmed over that point in your post. Excellent tool… What’s the footprint on your machine? Lightweight, I’m guessing, but would like to see how you rate that.
I hadn’t really looked at the footprint, but some metrics if that helps: The application is consuming 4-6MB of RAM on my system. Processor utilization does spike a bit when running, but nothing unusual. So I would describe the footprint as miniscule!
WordWeb has been a great help while we are scheduling exams at Mercy Medical Center. At times we are given a diagnosis that is difficult to spell – with this we are able to correctly spell the diagnosis and keep our calls under our 3 minute goal. We have been using WordWeb as a spell check since that is not a feature SCI offers.
Jen,
Does that mean you can build a customized dictionary or did you have a way of importing medical terms?
Mark
No they can’t import a dictionary – at least not in the free version, but it can get a lot of basic words like fibromyalgia, laminectomy, osteomyelitis, or sciatica so they find it helpful in those instances. WordWeb gives them the opportunity to find the spelling quickly with a web launch right out of the scheduling software, so it’s really handy. The scheduling gals really get the credit for the inspiration behind the article, they were so thrilled to have been turned on to it that I figured others would like to know about it too!