I would like to add - if you are using images/figures/tables in your work: use Adobe InDesign! Seriously - it is the best software for DTP and instead of a 5-6 hour job in word, it takes 30mins-1hour. It is also far easier to proofread - automatic figure numbering, page numbering, cross referencing. It as made my workflow so much easier!

That doesn't stop the wrong word correctly spelled sneaking through. Hence someone I know only spotted in the middle of printing that his thesis said 'pubic health' instead of 'public health' in one place.

Also worth bearing in mind that for very long documents Word gives up the ghost when it comes to underlining stuff. I've just worked on a report that was around 100K+ words where there were so many bits of science jargon and author names, Word gave up highlighting them, necessitating a manual click through spell check. Given how long it takes to do that, it's still possible to miss stuff unless you're uber focussed.

Right, I've been through the whole thing and spotted 63 typos...about one every 5 pages...urgggh. This isn't pretty :-(

If you add the words to the dictionary you don't have the issue of Word not spell checking long documents.

Incertus - I had quite a few typos too but they weren't a problem. I was just told to fix them.

Pubic health. That is actually quite funny.
As for red underlining, I have written my Thesis in Latex which is essentially a programming language. The spell checker picks up programming keywords as typos making it very hard to spot genuine errors.

Er, it's possible to download (free) scientific dictionaries and import them into Word. That's what I did, with the result that there was very little underlining in red.

Anybody hired live proofreader\editor for such purposes?