How to check for passive voice in Word
Word can flag passive voice, but the setting is off by default in most installations. Turn it on under File › Options › Proofing: set the Writing Style to Grammar (or Grammar & Refinements), open Settings, and tick Passive Voice and Passive Voice with Unknown Actor under Clarity. Passive sentences then get a blue double underline, and the Editor pane lists them.
Turning the check on (Windows)
- Choose File › Options › Proofing.
- Under When correcting spelling and grammar in Word, set Writing Style to Grammar & Refinements (older builds say Grammar; either exposes the settings) and choose Settings.
- Scroll to Clarity and tick Passive Voice and Passive Voice with Unknown Actor.
- Choose OK twice. Word rechecks the document and underlines passive sentences in blue.
TechRepublic’s walkthrough has screenshots of each dialog; the labels have been stable since Word 2019.
On a Mac
Word › Preferences › Spelling & Grammar, then Settings next to Writing Style, then tick the two passive voice options under Clarity.
Reading the results
A blue double underline marks a refinement suggestion. Click it for Word’s proposed active rewrite, or Ignore to leave that sentence. For the whole document, open the Editor pane (Review › Editor or F7) and expand Clarity: every passive sentence is listed with its suggestion. Office Watch notes that the same menu that offers “Ignore once” also lets you disable the passive-voice check for that document or globally, if you decide you have chosen the passive on purpose.
What Word gets wrong
Two things. It misses some passives — get-passives (“got fired”), infinitive passives (“needs to be done”) and some modal forms slip past — so a clean document in Word is not necessarily free of passives. And it over-flags be + -ed adjectives (“I am interested in the role”) as passive, which Microsoft’s own writing guidance warns about: a flag does not mean the usage is inappropriate.
Word also gives you no count. If you want a passive percentage, a benchmark, and the reason each sentence was flagged, select all, copy, and paste into our checker. It runs in the browser, handles the forms Word misses, and separates true passives from adjectives.
Outlook
Desktop Outlook has the same refinements under File › Options › Mail › Spelling and Autocorrect › Proofing, with the same Clarity options. Web and new Outlook rely on the Editor service and expose fewer settings.
Questions people ask
- Does Microsoft Word check for passive voice?
Yes, through the Editor’s Clarity refinements, but the check is usually off until you enable it in Proofing settings.
- Why isn't Word finding passive voice in my document?
Most likely the Passive Voice refinement is unticked, or Writing Style is set to Grammar only without refinements. Open File › Options › Proofing › Settings and tick both passive voice options. On Mac, the path is Word › Preferences › Spelling & Grammar › Settings.
- What does the blue underline mean in Word?
A blue double underline marks a style or refinement suggestion — passive voice, wordiness, clichés and similar. Red marks spelling; the plain blue single underline marks grammar.
- How do I see all passive sentences at once in Word?
Open the Editor pane (Review › Editor, or press F7) and expand Clarity. Each passive sentence is listed with a suggested rewrite. For a count and a percentage, paste the text into our checker.
Check your own text
Paste a paragraph. The check runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
Open the full checker for benchmarks and longer texts.