Resetting "text skipped during spell checking" in Word 200 never works

When I take the standard steps -- select all, set language, uncheck box -- it never works. What I get is NO boxes checked, and a check next to English. The last thing I tried was to make the default language english in the normal.dot [I usually never make changes in the normal dot but I felt this was safe. Still, I should have saved normal under different name] Of course that made no difference. Closing and reopening the document made no difference. What am I missing here?

Not only is this continuing to happen, it is now spreading to other documents, and I'm beginning to think it's also a problem in the normal template. Help!