I protected a spreadsheet I'm responsible for and got complaints from users
that they could no longer spell check the text boxes from the Drawing menu.
Even though they were unprotected, the fact that the sheet was protected
gave an error message when the spell check was selected from the menu. No
big deal. I simply added a button to the left of each text box that calls a
macro that unprotects and spell checks. No doubt seeing the button will
increase the users checking. But after the macro is run all the text lines
in the text box are selected. I haven't found a way to unselect them. This
is the macro I'm using:

Sub SpellCheckCore(S As String)
' code to spell check text box. must be on sheet with box
' arg: name of text box in string

Application.ScreenUpdating = False

Dim Flag As Boolean
If ActiveSheet.ProtectContents Then
Flag = True
ActiveSheet.Unprotect
End If

ActiveSheet.Shapes(S).Select
Selection.CheckSpelling

If Flag Then ActiveSheet.Protect

End Sub

I'm using Excel 97.

Don <donwiss at panix.com.