How Do You Spell Check in Affinity Publisher?

Did you know that you can easily use Affinity Publisher spell check to review your work for errors? Whether you’re working with Affinity Publisher templates or building a design from scratch, checking your work is essential. Thankfully, it’s quick, simple, and super convenient to do, right from within Publisher.

Affinity Publisher TemplatesAffinity Publisher TemplatesAffinity Publisher Templates
Download this and many more Affinity Publisher templates on Envato Elements.

What You’ll Learn in This Affinity Publisher Tutorial

  • Where to find Affinity Publisher spell check
  • How to use Affinity Publisher spell check to quickly and efficiently check your work for errors

Tutorial Assets

In this walkthrough, we’ll use the following optional assets to demonstrate Affinity Publisher’s spell check features:

Keep in mind that you can use these techniques in any Affinity Publisher document—whether it’s Affinity Publisher templates or a file you built from scratch. However, it is essential that your document contains text, or there won’t be anything to spell check!

Bonus Tip: did you know Adobe InDesign IDML templates can be used in Affinity Publisher too? Check out this tutorial to learn more!

1. How to Spell Check in Affinity Publisher

Step 1

Begin in your Affinity Publisher document. In this tutorial, we’ll use one of the professionally designed Affinity Publisher templates from Envato Elements.

This brochure design has plenty of text space—which makes it extra important to check and double-check for errors before printing. Here’s a look at our workspace in Affinity Publisher with a document open. Remember to use the Frame Text Tool, highlighted below, to create and edit content in your text boxes.

Affinity Publisher Frame Text ToolAffinity Publisher Frame Text ToolAffinity Publisher Frame Text Tool

Step 2

Navigate to Text > Spelling > Spelling Options.

This will open up the Spelling Dialog box or Spell Checker. This is optional, but helpful if you want options like spelling suggestions.

You’ll notice that Affinity Publisher has highlighted the typographical error in our example file with a red underline. We can manually adjust this or choose one of the suggestions. We can also choose Ignore to skip this word, teach Publisher this word via Learn, or even look up a definition by selecting Define.

Affinity Publisher Spell Check OptionsAffinity Publisher Spell Check OptionsAffinity Publisher Spell Check Options

Step 3

Affinity Publisher spell check can also keep things even more informal. Close the Spelling Dialog box, and let’s check it out.

Go to Text > Spelling > Check Spelling

Now, the error is highlighted and in red—but I don’t have the Spelling Dialog box open anymore. This is handy if you just want errors highlighted, but you don’t necessarily want suggestions or added options visible.

Affinity Publisher Check SpellingAffinity Publisher Check SpellingAffinity Publisher Check Spelling

Step 4

Prefer a more word-processor-like experience? Affinity Publisher spell check can do that too. We can go to Text > Spelling > Check Spelling While Typing.

This way, any word typed or inserted into your work will be automatically highlighted, a lot like you might see in programs like Microsoft Word. This is handy if you’re typing directly into Affinity Publisher; spell checking like this makes it easy to find errors as you go.

Affinity Publisher spell check while typingAffinity Publisher spell check while typingAffinity Publisher spell check while typing

Step 5

If you keep Check Spelling While Typing toggled on, Affinity Publisher will keep an eye on your entire document. Handy, right? Remember, you can easily toggle this on or off under Text > Spelling > Check Spelling While Typing.

You’ll know if it’s on if it has a check mark beside it in this menu.

Affinity Publisher Check Spelling While Typing ToggleAffinity Publisher Check Spelling While Typing ToggleAffinity Publisher Check Spelling While Typing Toggle

Step 6

But what if your Affinity Publisher spell check isn’t working right—maybe Affinity Publisher spell check is catching words that aren’t misspelled. What’s up with that? The issue might be your selected language.

Here’s a common way to fix this issue: in the Character panel, you can double-check that your text is in your preferred language. If, for example, your text characters are set to Spanish, then your spell check would reflect this language choice. 

Click on the Character Icon in your Options Bar to open the Character panel. Then you can scroll down to the Language Options to choose your desired language for Spelling.

Affinity Publisher Language OptionsAffinity Publisher Language OptionsAffinity Publisher Language Options

Now, You Can Simply and Easily Check Your Work in Affinity Publisher

Affinity Publisher makes it super easy to check your work, whether you want to spell check an entire document or check as you type. Whether you’re building a design document from scratch or using Affinity Publisher templates, checking your work is a breeze. I hope these tips helped you with your project!

Affinity Publisher templatesAffinity Publisher templatesAffinity Publisher templates

Learn More About Affinity Publisher Today

Affinity Publisher is a powerful design tool with tons of possibilities. It’s a worthy rival of industry giant Adobe InDesign, and definitely worth checking out. Want to learn more about Affinity Publisher? Check out these free tutorials and jumpstart your design work in Affinity Publisher today.