How to Use Grammarly in Word to Write Flawlessly | 7 essential steps

If you write in Microsoft Word, you already have a powerful editor at your fingertips. But what if you could supercharge it with one of the world’s most advanced writing assistants?

Learning how to use grammarly in word merges the robust formatting and layout capabilities of a classic word processor with the intelligent, context-aware suggestions of modern AI.

This combination creates a seamless environment where your ideas can flow without being constantly interrupted by the need to self-edit.

This integration is designed to catch the subtle mistakes that native spell checkers consistently miss, from tone inconsistencies to complex grammatical errors.

It’s about transforming your document from a simple text file into a dynamic partner in the writing process.

The goal is to make professional-grade writing accessible to everyone, whether you’re drafting a critical business proposal, an academic paper, or a personal letter.

This guide will walk you through the entire process, from the initial installation to mastering the features that make this tool so indispensable for writers of all levels.

You will discover how to set up the software, interpret its suggestions, and customize it to fit your unique voice and goals.

1. Installing the grammarly add-in for microsoft word

Before you can explore how to use grammarly in word, you need to successfully install the add-in.

This process is straightforward, but it requires a few specific steps to ensure everything works correctly.

First, you must have an active Grammarly account. If you do not have one, visit the Grammarly website and sign up for a free account; this foundational step is non-negotiable.

Next, you need to have a compatible version of Microsoft Office. Generally, Grammarly supports Word for Microsoft 365 and Word 2016 and later for Windows.

It is always a good practice to ensure your Microsoft Office installation is fully updated to the latest version to avoid any potential compatibility conflicts.

The installation itself is managed through the Grammarly desktop application, which serves as the hub for all its desktop integrations.

To begin, download and install the Grammarly desktop app from the official website. Once installed, log into your account within the app.

Navigate to the ‘Apps’ section within the Grammarly application. Here, you should see an option for Microsoft Word. Ensure the toggle switch next to it is turned on.

This action downloads and activates the Word add-in. Now, open Microsoft Word on your computer. You should see a new ‘Grammarly’ tab in the toolbar ribbon at the top of the screen.

If you do not see this tab, you may need to enable it manually. Go to ‘File’ > ‘Options’ > ‘Add-ins’. At the bottom of the window, manage ‘COM Add-ins’ and click ‘Go’.

A dialog box will appear; check the box next to ‘Grammarly’ and click ‘OK’. The Grammarly sidebar should now appear on the right-hand side of your Word document, indicating the integration is active and ready.

This seamless installation is the first critical step in leveraging Grammarly’s power directly within your familiar writing environment.

2. Navigating the grammarly interface inside word

Once the add-in is active, understanding the layout of the Grammarly interface within Word is your next step. Unlike a separate window, Grammarly embeds itself directly into your Word workspace.

The most prominent feature is the Grammarly sidebar, which typically appears on the right side of your document. This panel is your command center for all interactions with the tool.

At the top of this sidebar, you will find a circular score that represents your document’s overall performance.

This score is a quick, visual assessment of your writing’s quality, factoring in correctness, clarity, engagement, and delivery.

Clicking on this score will reveal a detailed breakdown, showing you the percentage of your text that is error-free and how it measures up across different writing metrics.

This provides an immediate, high-level overview of your work’s health.

As you write or edit your document, Grammarly underlines potential issues directly in the text.

These underlines come in different colors, each representing a different category of suggestion. Red underlines indicate critical grammar and spelling errors.

Blue underlines highlight issues related to clarity and conciseness, such as wordy sentences or passive voice.

Purple underlines are linked to vocabulary enhancements, suggesting more powerful word choices. Green underlines provide feedback on your tone and formality.

When you click on an underlined word or phrase, a small card pops up explaining the issue and offering one or more corrective suggestions. You can apply a fix by simply clicking on the suggestion.

The sidebar also provides a centralized list of all these alerts, organized by category, allowing you to review and address them systematically.

This dual-feedback system, with both in-text underlines and a comprehensive sidebar, gives you flexible control over your editing process, enabling you to make corrections on the fly or conduct a thorough review once your draft is complete.

3. A step-by-step guide to checking your document

Knowing how to use grammarly in word for a comprehensive document review is where the tool truly proves its value.

It is more than just fixing errors as they appear; it is about performing a structured audit of your entire text. Start by composing your first draft without obsessing over every single underline. Let your ideas flow freely onto the page.

Once you have a complete draft, it is time to engage Grammarly in a more focused manner. Begin with the overall score in the sidebar.

Click on it to open the performance overview. This screen shows you how many issues were found in each category: Correctness,

Clarity, Engagement, and Delivery. This high-level perspective helps you understand the general strengths and weaknesses of your document before you dive into the specifics.

Next, navigate through the specific categories in the sidebar. It is most effective to tackle them in a logical order. First, address all the ‘Correctness’ issues.

These are your critical spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Resolving these foundational problems first will clean up your text and make subsequent reviews easier.

Then, move on to ‘Clarity’ suggestions. This section helps you refine your sentences to ensure they are easily understood. Look for alerts about long, complex sentences, passive voice misuse, and unclear references.

After your text is clear and correct, proceed to the ‘Engagement’ and ‘Delivery’ tabs. These are more stylistic, helping you choose more compelling vocabulary and ensure your tone is appropriate for your intended audience. For each suggestion, read the explanation provided by Grammarly.

Do not blindly accept every change. Consider the context. Sometimes, a technically “incorrect” phrase might be a stylistic choice.

The goal is to use Grammarly as an expert advisor, not an absolute dictator. This methodical, step-by-step approach to checking your document ensures that no aspect of your writing is overlooked, resulting in a polished, professional, and effective piece of writing.

3.1. Addressing correctness and clarity

The ‘Correctness’ and ‘Clarity’ categories form the bedrock of good writing, and this is where Grammarly’s integration becomes most visible.

Correctness issues are the hard rules of the English language: subject-verb agreement, misplaced commas, incorrect verb tenses, and straightforward spelling mistakes.

When you see a red underline, it typically signifies a clear-cut error that needs correction.

Grammarly is remarkably adept at catching context-dependent spelling errors that Word’s native checker misses, such as混淆 ‘their,’ ‘there,’ and ‘they’re.’

As you review these suggestions, you will notice that the explanations are often educational, helping you understand the rule behind the mistake so you can avoid it in the future.

Clarity suggestions, marked in blue, are slightly more nuanced. They focus on the readability and structure of your sentences.

A common suggestion here is to shorten a long, winding sentence. For example, Grammarly might flag a 40-word sentence and suggest breaking it into two shorter, more digestible statements. It also frequently identifies the passive voice.

While passive voice is not grammatically wrong, it can make your writing feel indirect and less engaging. Grammarly will suggest a rephrasing to use the active voice, which is generally stronger and more dynamic.

Another key clarity feature is its ability to spot unclear antecedents, where a pronoun like ‘it’ or ‘this’ could refer to multiple things in the previous sentence, potentially confusing the reader.

By systematically working through correctness and then clarity, you build a strong, understandable foundation for your document before moving on to more refined stylistic improvements.

3.2. Refining engagement and delivery

After solidifying the foundation of your document, the next phase in mastering how to use grammarly in word involves the artistic dimensions of writing: Engagement and Delivery.

These features are often available in the premium version of Grammarly and are focused on elevating your writing from merely correct to genuinely compelling. The ‘Engagement’ tab provides suggestions to make your writing more lively and interesting for the reader.

It flags repetitive word use and offers a thesaurus-powered list of synonyms to diversify your vocabulary. For instance, if you repeatedly use the word “important,” Grammarly might suggest “crucial,” “vital,” or “paramount” to add variety and precision.

It also identifies weak or hesitant language, such as “I think we should maybe consider,” and encourages more confident phrasing like “We should consider.”

The ‘Delivery’ tab is all about tone and formality. This is where Grammarly’s AI analyzes the sentiment and style of your writing to see if it aligns with your communicative goals.

A report for a corporate boardroom should have a formal, confident tone, while a blog post might aim for an informal, friendly, or witty tone. Grammarly provides feedback on the tone it detects and allows you to set a specific goal for your document.

You can tell Grammarly you are writing for an ‘Expert’ audience with a ‘Formal’ style and a ‘Confident’ intent. The tool will then tailor its suggestions to help you hit that target. For example, it might suggest changing a contraction like “can’t” to “cannot” to increase formality.

By paying close attention to engagement and delivery, you ensure your writing not only communicates information but also connects with your reader on an emotional and rhetorical level, making your message far more persuasive and memorable.

4. Customizing grammarly’s settings for your needs

A one-size-fits-all approach rarely works in writing, and a powerful aspect of knowing how to use grammarly in word is learning to customize it to your specific needs.

Grammarly’s default settings are designed for general use, but its true power is unlocked when you tailor it to your unique voice, goals, and the specific requirements of your projects.

The primary way to do this is through the Goals menu. Before you even start writing, click on the Grammarly tab in Word and then click on ‘Goals’.

A settings window will pop up, allowing you to define the context of your document. This step is crucial because it directly influences the type of suggestions you will receive.

Within the Goals menu, you can set your audience, formality level, domain, and tone. For instance, if you are writing a technical academic paper, you would set the audience to ‘Expert’, the formality to ‘Formal’, the domain to ‘Academic’, and the tone to ‘Neutral’.

This tells Grammarly to be stricter with its grammar rules and to avoid casual language suggestions. Conversely, if you are crafting a marketing email, you might choose ‘General’ audience, ‘Informal’ formality, ‘Business’ domain, and ‘Upbeat’ tone.

This prompts Grammarly to allow for more creative language and a friendlier voice. Beyond goals, you can also create a personal dictionary. If you consistently use industry-specific jargon, brand names, or unique acronyms that Grammarly flags as misspellings, you can add them to your personal dictionary.

This prevents unnecessary alerts and streamlines your editing workflow. For advanced users, Grammarly even allows you to turn off specific rules altogether.

If you find a particular grammar suggestion is consistently unhelpful for your style of writing, you can disable that rule, making the tool a truly personalized writing assistant.

4.1. Setting your language preferences

Delving deeper into customization, setting your language preferences is a fundamental step for writers who do not use standard American English. Grammarly, by default, is set to US English.

This means it uses American spelling conventions, like “color” instead of “colour” and “analyze” instead of “analyse.”

If you are writing for a UK, Canadian, or Australian audience, leaving this setting unchanged will result in a flood of incorrect “spelling error” alerts for perfectly valid words. To change this, you need to access the main Grammarly editor online, as this setting syncs across all your devices.

Log into your account on the Grammarly website and navigate to ‘Account’ > ‘Customize’. Here, you will find the option to change your language to English (US, UK, Canada, or Australia). Selecting the appropriate variant ensures that Grammarly’s spell check aligns with the linguistic conventions of your target audience.

This level of customization extends to formality as well. While you can set formality for individual documents in the Word add-in, you can also set a default formality preference in your online account.

If the vast majority of your writing is formal reports, you can set this as your default to save time.

Furthermore, for multilingual writers, Grammarly offers a setting to acknowledge that English may not be your first language. Enabling this can sometimes tweak the algorithm to be more helpful with certain types of common ESL errors.

Taking a few minutes to configure these global language preferences ensures that the Grammarly experience in your Microsoft Word is calibrated for your specific context from the very beginning, reducing noise and increasing the relevance of every suggestion it provides.

4.2. Managing your personal dictionary

As you continue to use Grammarly across various projects, you will inevitably encounter words and phrases that are correct in your context but are consistently flagged as errors.

This is where the personal dictionary feature becomes an invaluable time-saver.

The personal dictionary is a curated list of words that you have explicitly told Grammarly to ignore during its spell check.

This is particularly useful for proper nouns, technical jargon, specialized industry terminology, and unique brand names that are not part of the standard English lexicon.

Instead of having to manually dismiss the same red underline every time you write “Focary.com” or “neuroplasticity,” you can add them to your dictionary once and be done with it.

Managing your personal dictionary is done through the Grammarly web portal.

When you are logged into your account on the Grammarly website, go to ‘Account’ and then select ‘Personal Dictionary’. Here, you will see a list of all the words you have already added. You can add new entries by typing them into the provided field and clicking ‘Add’.

It is important to note that this dictionary is account-wide, meaning any word you add will be recognized as correct in all your documents, across all devices where you use Grammarly, including the Microsoft Word add-in. This creates a seamless and personalized experience.

If you ever add a word by mistake or change your mind, you can easily remove it from the same list.

By actively managing this dictionary, you train Grammarly to understand your unique vocabulary, making it a more intelligent and less intrusive partner in your writing process.

5. Overcoming common issues with the grammarly-word integration

While the integration between Grammarly and Microsoft Word is generally robust, users may occasionally encounter technical hiccups.

Knowing how to use grammarly in word effectively includes being able to troubleshoot these common problems.

One of the most frequent issues is the Grammarly sidebar not appearing in Word after installation. If this happens, do not immediately reinstall everything. First, check if the add-in is simply disabled within Word.

Go to ‘File’ > ‘Options’ > ‘Add-ins’. At the bottom, manage ‘COM Add-ins’ and click ‘Go’. Ensure the box next to ‘Grammarly’ is checked. If it is unchecked, check it and click ‘OK’. If it is already checked, try unchecking it, clicking ‘OK’, then going back in and re-checking it to force a refresh. This simple step resolves a majority of visibility issues.

Another common problem is Grammarly failing to start or becoming unresponsive within a Word document. This can often be fixed by restarting the Grammarly application on your computer.

Close Word completely, then find the Grammarly icon in your system tray (on Windows) or menu bar (on Mac), right-click it, and choose ‘Quit Grammarly’.

Relaunch the Grammarly app and then reopen your Word document. If the problem persists, check for updates for both Grammarly and Microsoft Word. An outdated version of either software can lead to compatibility conflicts.

The Grammarly desktop app has an option to check for updates in its settings. For Word, go to ‘File’ > ‘Account’ > ‘Update Options’ > ‘Update Now’. Sometimes, other Word add-ins can interfere with Grammarly. Try starting Word in Safe Mode (hold the Ctrl key while clicking the Word icon) and see if Grammarly works. If it does, another add-in is likely the culprit, and you can disable your other add-ins one by one to identify the conflict.

6. Leveraging advanced grammarly features for professional writing

For users with a Grammarly Premium subscription, the capabilities of the Word add-in expand significantly, offering tools that are indispensable for professional and academic writing.

Two of the most powerful advanced features are the plagiarism detector and the full-sentence rewrites.

The plagiarism checker compares your text against a massive database of billions of web pages and academic papers to highlight any potential unoriginal content.

This is an critical tool for students, researchers, and content creators who need to ensure the integrity of their work.

To use it within Word, click on the Grammarly tab and then select ‘Plagiarism’. The tool will scan your document and provide a percentage of original text, flagging any passages that match existing online sources, along with links to those sources.

This allows you to properly cite any referenced material or rephrase the content to be original.

The other standout feature is the fluency suggestions and full-sentence rewrites. While the free version corrects clear errors, Premium often provides alternative phrasings for entire sentences to improve clarity, tone, and flow.

For example, if you have a sentence that is structurally awkward but not technically incorrect, Grammarly Premium might offer one or two completely reworked versions that are more elegant and direct.

This is like having a professional editor looking over your shoulder, offering stylistic advice.

Furthermore, Premium provides more nuanced feedback on word choice, helping you select vocabulary that enhances your persuasiveness and impact.

It can identify vague language and suggest more precise alternatives, making your arguments sharper and your narratives more vivid.

For anyone whose livelihood or academic success depends on the quality of their writing, these advanced features transform Grammarly from a proofreader into a collaborative writing coach.

7. Developing an effective editing workflow with grammarly

Simply having a tool is one thing; integrating it into a sustainable habit is another.

The final step in mastering how to use grammarly in word is to develop a personal editing workflow that maximizes efficiency and effectiveness.

Relying on Grammarly to check every sentence as you write your first draft can be disruptive to your creative flow.

A more productive method is to separate the writing and editing phases distinctly. During the writing phase, focus solely on getting your ideas down on paper.

You can even temporarily turn off Grammarly suggestions by clicking the ‘Disable for 10 minutes’ option in the sidebar to avoid any visual distractions. Let the words flow without self-judgment.

Once your draft is complete, activate Grammarly and begin your review.

Adopt a top-down approach. First, use the overall score and category tabs in the sidebar to fix all critical errors in ‘Correctness’. This is your first proofreading pass.

On the second pass, focus on ‘Clarity’, restructuring sentences and improving readability.

The third pass is for refinement, using the ‘Engagement’ and ‘Delivery’ features to polish your language and tone.

Do not just click ‘Apply’ on every suggestion. Read each one carefully. Ask yourself if the change preserves your intended meaning.

Sometimes, your original phrasing, even if slightly unconventional, is the right choice for your voice.

Use the ‘Ignore’ feature for such cases. Finally, after you have addressed all the suggestions, read the entire document aloud from start to finish.

This old-school technique helps you catch any awkward phrasing or rhythm issues that both you and the algorithm might have missed.

By establishing this kind of structured, multi-stage workflow, you ensure that Grammarly enhances your writing process without overpowering your unique authorial voice.

Learning how to use grammarly in word is a practical skill that pays dividends in clarity, professionalism, and confidence.

This integration bridges the gap between the familiar environment of a traditional word processor and the intelligent assistance of modern AI.

It empowers you to produce writing that is not only free from embarrassing errors but is also stylistically refined and perfectly tailored to your audience.

The process, from a simple installation to a customized editing workflow, is designed to become a seamless part of your creative expression. Remember that the tool is there to serve your voice, not replace it.

Use its suggestions as expert guidance, apply its settings to fit your projects, and trust your own judgment for the final call.

With practice, this partnership will become second nature, allowing you to communicate your ideas with greater impact and precision in every document you create.