Does Canva Have Spell Check?

If you love Canva as much as I do, you probably share one of the biggest pet peeves I have about this great design software. You make a beautiful design or craft a lengthy and wordy brochure. You pat yourself on the back, send it off to the printer or upload it to your Printful store and then gasp. A word is spelled wrong. Why wouldn’t the spell check catch that? Well, welcome to a huge Canva design flaw and personal pet peeve of mine.

Canva does not have a spell check feature. To get around this, use Canva in Google Chrome with their spell check feature turned on. You can also run all of your text through a spell check program like Grammarly before you start designing.

The fact that Canva doesn’t have a spell check can be really frustrating. It seems like a basic feature that we assume to be a part of document and design programs. I’m not a software developer, so I can’t speak to how complicated it would be to include, but Canva has a lot of complicated features. 

I remember the days of Microsoft Word’s Clippy. Jeez, he was persistent whenever you spelled a word wrong. There were times I wanted to throw that cute little paperclip out the window. If Clippy can tell me that I’m a horrible speller, why can’t Canva?

There must be more to the spell check story that we don’t know. It’s so typical of me to criticize a program when I have zero software development abilities. 

To be clear, I REALLY love Canva. It’s a great design program that is accessible to beginning and advanced designers alike. They have a GINORMOUS library of photos, design elements, fonts, and templates that make designing easy and wonderful. Without Canva, specifically Canva Pro, I wouldn’t have any of my online stores. 

I highly suggest that you check out Canva Pro. For all of it’s spell check flaws, it really shines given all of the other capabilities it has. Luckily, you don’t have to shell out any money to give it a try. Grab a free trial of Canva Pro that will let you test the waters.

Is Spell Check Coming to Canva in the Future?

Users have expressed frustration over Canva’s lack of a spell check feature for a number of years now. Canva has acknowledged the request and said they’ve added it to their list of features to add in the future.

At the time of this writing, the Facebook post requesting the spell check feature is more than 4 years old. It’s a hot topic though and people have left comments on the post every year since it was originally posted. 

Given Canva’s responses to the comments, I don’t get the feeling that they are working on it. I mean, people have made a point to return to the post and leave a comment to request this feature every single year. 

If it were really one of Canva’s priorities, they either would have developed it by now or would give responses that were less vague.

Again, I’m not hating on Canva in anyway here, but I also don’t want people to get their hopes up. I also have zero connections to the inner workings of Canva and have no idea what they’re planning. Spell check could pop up tomorrow; the Canva staff chuckling maniacally over how they kept it a secret all of this time. 

Alas, I have no insight into when Canva’s spell check feature will magically appear. So, in the meantime, let’s learn to live without it. In reality, spell check is something that’s easy to complain about, but it’s actually a really easy hurdle to overcome.  

Use Google Chrome to Add Spell Check to Canva

Go into the settings of Google Chrome and make sure that the spell check setting is turned on. When you use Canva through Google Chrome, misspelled words will be highlighted, not by Canva itself, but by Google Chrome.

HUGE DISCLAIMER: This doesn’t always work. There are times when the spell check shows up, and times when it doesn’t. The more consistent option is Grammarly.

This is a really simple workaround that essentially adds spell check right into Canva. Misspelled words are underlined in red and you can right click on them to see spelling alternatives. This is the Canva spell check method I use and it works really well.

If you don’t use Google Chrome though, there are other ways around the spell check issue with just one extra step.

How to Get Past Canva’s Lack of Spell Check

To deal with Canva’s lack of spell check, simply run all of your text through a program that has a spell check feature like Grammarly or Microsoft Word. No matter how simple your text is, get in the habit of doing this so that a misspelled word never slips through the cracks.

It’s annoying to add another step to our design process. But, taking the extra few seconds to run our text through a spell check program is a lot easier than redoing a design or wondering why a design isn’t selling.

Trust me, I have experience with this one. I was selling a design on my Etsy store that had a misspelled word. Not only did I miss it, but so did my customer. It wasn’t until I sent the design to my printing partner to be manufactured onto a t-shirt that I realized the mistake. It was in a blind panic that I contacted my production partner to get it switched out. 

And it wasn’t a complicated design with a lot of words either. No, those simple designs will get you.

Even when you think it’s silly and unneeded, run all of the words you’re using on Canva through a program with a spell check feature.

Here are some easy options:

1. Grammarly

2. Microsoft Word

3. Google Docs

4. Any word processing program you have

There are a lot of free programs that offer spell check. Just copy and paste your text over to one of those programs and make sure that it’s good to go. 

It’s frustrating that Canva, with all of its amazing features, doesn’t offer something basic like spell check. That said, it’s not a huge hurdle and it’s easy to overcome. Use Google Chrome’s spell check capabilities to check your spelling right within Canva. Or, run all of your Canva text through a free spell check or word processing program. 

Whichever method you choose, go forth and make great art!