"Add Word" to custom dictionary

[Adam D. Blainey]

I have read the help file and activated my custom dictionary, etc., but it
won't let me add words to it, none-the-less. The "ADD" button is still
grayed out. Any suggestions?

 

[Elliott Roper]

I have read the help file and activated my custom dictionary, etc., but it
won't let me add words to it, none-the-less. The "ADD" button is still
grayed out. Any suggestions?

How are you adding them? I do it by including the word to be added into
a document, and spell-check that while my custom dict is enabled.
I Have a small Powerbook. I couldn't resist calling the file Elliott's
12 inch dict. Childish? Moi?
ps I love the way your "oaf' is drawn. Using Safari or IE 5though, I
can't get into the story. I get a green frame round a Quicktime player
movie in a pop-up which stays white in the first story and displays a
hang on a sec message in the second. I have QT6.5 and up-to-date Flash.

What oaf? See Adam's sig.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur [MVP]]

I have read the help file and activated my custom dictionary, etc., but it
won't let me add words to it, none-the-less. The "ADD" button is still
grayed out. Any suggestions?

I had the same problem with early versions of OfficeX. Is Office up to
date on your machine (should be 10.1.5).


Corentin

 

[Adam D. Blainey]

Yes, I am running 10.1.5 Office. Custom Dictionary is the only feature I
can't get working. Other than that, it is a killer app. Better than Word for
Windows even!

 

[Adam D. Blainey]

Thanks for checking out my web site. I am sorry to hear it isn¹t working.
There are always some issues from so many variations of CPU+Browser out
there. It should work. Try it again. Do you get the picture in the web page
that says, ³LUX Engine 3223 #1² and ³LUX Engine 3223 #2?²

I would love for you to see it, my friend and I spent 2 years on this
QuickTime content and I feel it is the best stuff out there from an
innovative delivery standpoint.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur [MVP]]

Yes, I am running 10.1.5 Office. Custom Dictionary is the only feature I
can't get working. Other than that, it is a killer app. Better than Word for
Windows even!

))
Then if your custom dictionary is properly specified in Word, it might
be because ti is corrupted. Try opening it with a text editor and look
for weird characters.


Corentin

 

[Elliott Roper]

Thanks for checking out my web site. I am sorry to hear it isn¹t working.
There are always some issues from so many variations of CPU+Browser out
there. It should work. Try it again. Do you get the picture in the web page
that says, ³LUX Engine 3223 #1² and ³LUX Engine 3223 #2?²

Yep, but that is as far as I get. Those puppies do not get further than
displaying the frame in one case and in the second, telling me to wait
for ...

I would love for you to see it, my friend and I spent 2 years on this
QuickTime content and I feel it is the best stuff out there from an
innovative delivery standpoint.

I agree, that oaf is so-oo cool

 

[Adam D. Blainey]

Then, I hope you have high speed connection, because the files are quite
large - around 10mb. Well, thanks for trying, ok?

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

Hi Adam:

The custom dictionary should not be set to a "Language". If it is, you can
add words from only text that has the matching language set.

I recommend that you open your custom dictionary in TextEdit and look at the
first line. If it begins LID and some numbers, simply delete that line.
That's the language specification, and results in the dictionary working
only in the specified language.

Elliott is more likely to be correct, though: the custom dictionary may have
Unicode characters in it: if so, it won't work. Open it, paste the content
into SimpleText (NOT TextEdit....) and save.

Delete your Custom Dictionary.

Re-open the SimpleText version, which now should have no nasty Unicode
characters in it.

Paste into Word and save it as your custom dictionary.


Hope this helps

Yes, I am running 10.1.5 Office. Custom Dictionary is the only feature I
can't get working. Other than that, it is a killer app. Better than Word for
Windows even!

--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Arno Wouters]

The custom dictionary should not be set to a "Language". If it is, you can
add words from only text that has the matching language set.

I don't understand this. If you do not set the language of your custom
dictionary the spell checker will accept the English words in your
custom dictionary in a French text. That is not what you want (at least
it is not what I want). If your custom dictionary contains only names it
is different, of course.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

Hi Arno:

Mmmmm... What you say is quite correct, and I regard it as a design bug
that it works that way. However for most users I believe It's better stated
the other way around. "If you do not set a language in your custom
dictionary, your spell checker will accept any word from the dictionary for
the language of the text it si checking, plus any word from the custom
dictionary."

However, if you DO set a language on your custom dictionary, you can add
words to it ONLY from text marked with the appropriate language.

This means that you have to have a custom dictionary for EVERY language you
intend to work with, and maintain them. Maintaining them means adding
things such as names to every custom dictionary you have, and deciding which
words go where.

Another point that is important is that Word is the only application that
can use multiple custom dictionaries. The other applications (including
Entourage) use only the first.

When you get into the Custom Dictionaries dialog in Word, the sequence of
the dictionaries in the list is significant. Word will use or add to the
custom dictionaries by beginning at the top of the list and working down
until it finds the language that it is looking for. If you have multiple
custom dictionaries in a single language (e.g. English General, English
Technical, English Project Specific) Word will look for a word it can't
spell in all three, in the sequence that they appear in the dialog. It will
accept the first match that it finds, so if the correct spelling is in the
bottom dictionary but there is a bad spelling higher in the list, the bad
one will be used. When it comes to ADD a word, Word will first search all
dictionaries for the language: if the word to be added is not in any of
them, it will be added to the top one.

My advice is, as you point out, appropriate for people who work only with
English, but expect to encounter anything up to 29 different flavours of
English. That's me: and I run with no language in the custom dictionary so
anything added is available to any flavour of English I see.

People who are working across dissimilar languages would indeed need to
maintain a custom dictionary for each.

Hope this helps

This responds to article <1g9sfjc.1qrkumak28qlcN%[email protected]>,

I don't understand this. If you do not set the language of your custom
dictionary the spell checker will accept the English words in your
custom dictionary in a French text. That is not what you want (at least
it is not what I want). If your custom dictionary contains only names it
is different, of course.

--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Arno Wouters]

This responds to article <1g9sfjc.1qrkumak28qlcN%[email protected]>,

This means that you have to have a custom dictionary for EVERY language you
intend to work with, and maintain them. Maintaining them means adding
things such as names to every custom dictionary you have, and deciding which
words go where.

I have exactly one custom dictionary for each language and no general
custom dictionary. This saves me the trouble of deciding which words go
where. It is annoying however that I often have to add the same name to
two or more dictionaries.

When thinking about your post it occurred to me that it is perhaps
useful to have a general name dictionary (not set to a language) in
addition to the different language custom dictionaries. But of course in
that case I have to decide for each word that I want to add whether I
want it in the name dictionary or in the language dictionary. I haven't
tried this yet.

My advice is, as you point out, appropriate for people who work only with
English, but expect to encounter anything up to 29 different flavours of
English. That's me: and I run with no language in the custom dictionary so
anything added is available to any flavour of English I see.

That seems to make sense!

Thanks for your response, John.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

Hi Arno:

When thinking about your post it occurred to me that it is perhaps
useful to have a general name dictionary (not set to a language) in
addition to the different language custom dictionaries. But of course in
that case I have to decide for each word that I want to add whether I
want it in the name dictionary or in the language dictionary. I haven't
tried this yet.

Don't! It's great thinking, but unfortunately it is not a way forward.

Yes, you can have one general purpose custom dictionary, and that part works
perfectly.

However, there are a couple of gotchas that make it impossible in practice.

The first is that Word will place a word in the first dictionary that will
accept the language. So now, the order of the custom dictionaries in the
list becomes critically important.

If No Language is the "First" dictionary in the list, it will "capture" all
the additions and lookups, and no words will get added to the other
dictionaries.

If it is the "last", one of the other dictionaries will always capture the
word, and nothing ever gets added to the general dictionary.

The other problem is that none of the other Office applications will ever be
able to see the dictionary unless it is the "first". I have several times
requested a whole re-think of the Language mechanism, because it's just too
complicated for most people to use. Many people get pretty random results
until in desperation they turn spelling off and don't use it at all

Cheers

--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Arno Wouters]

Hi John!

Don't! It's great thinking, but unfortunately it is not a way forward.

Oops. Glad I was slow to try it.

The first is that Word will place a word in the first dictionary that will
accept the language. So now, the order of the custom dictionaries in the
list becomes critically important.

This is really bad. I would expect Word to offer a choice between all
relevant dictionaries.

The other problem is that none of the other Office applications will ever be
able to see the dictionary unless it is the "first".

Just as bad.

Thank for pointing this out.