Any chance of Polish proofing tools?

[ttarchal]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: intel

Anybody knows if Microsoft plans to release more proofing tools for Word for Mac 2008? Particularly I'm interested in Polish proofing tools, which are sadly missing from the product even though it is being sold on the Polish market, and the Windows Office has had them for ages.

Alternatively, perhaps anybody has a proven way of installing external proofing tools such as Unix aspell, or maybe dictionaries from older version of Office, into Mac Office 2008?

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

See the "My Language Isn't Supported" section here:
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Languages.html
for some experiments you might try and advice on requesting Polish
support from MS.

Office 2004 added new languages, Office 2008 added new languages on top
of that (I'm pretty sure)--my guess is that pattern might continue.
Actually, it's possible that Office 2004 SP2 actually added new
languages also.

 

[John McGhie]

Office 2008 will not have Polish proofing tools from Microsoft.

There is a developer of Polish proofing tools having discussions with
Microsoft. But whether they decide to release a product for Microsoft
Office 2008, I have no idea.

Probably "nobody" in the world knows yet whether Microsoft will release
Polish proofing for the NEXT version of Microsoft Office for the Mac.

The people who are most likely to know are the local Microsoft Office in
Poland. Ring them. Ignore what the first person says, and ask to speak to
the Office Marketing Manager. She's the only one in the world likely to
know the answer to this question. And PLEASE.... Tell us, in here, what
she says -- there are several people who want to know

I don't think anyone at Macintosh Business Unit in Redmond yet knows the
answer, because I do not think the decision has yet been made. Head Office
will wait for Microsoft Poland to make a business case requesting Polish.
If they can promise enough sales to fund the product, then of course Redmond
will offer Polish.

However: Proofing tools are expensive to make, so the number of sales needs
to be "high". And if Microsoft has to purchase the dictionary from a third
party, it is even more expensive. And sorry: the Windows version won't work
because it relies on a piece of Windows to make it go.

Hope this helps

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: intel

Anybody knows if Microsoft plans to release more proofing tools for Word for
Mac 2008? Particularly I'm interested in Polish proofing tools, which are
sadly missing from the product even though it is being sold on the Polish
market, and the Windows Office has had them for ages.

Alternatively, perhaps anybody has a proven way of installing external
proofing tools such as Unix aspell, or maybe dictionaries from older version
of Office, into Mac Office 2008?

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[KazimierzNowak]

I just do not get why is it so hard to get a spelling tool that has been working for Windows for ages to (I mean the Polish dictionary) to work with Mac. I am sorry I do not buy this third party developer explanation. I never would have purchased the word for my Mac (which is extremely expensive comparing to the Windows version) had I known it didn't support my language. We are buying a well known and established product and want it to work. So we do not care whether it is Microsoft themselves or some small developer that is responsible for the lack of functionality. I wanted to try this external dictionary advice, but whenever I try to choose dictionary from the options menu in my word2008 I get: "Microsoft word has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience". I must say I hate the word for Mac. It is the only application on my computer that keeps hanging and/or closing unexpectedly. It is obvious that MS treats us Mac users as lesser customers.

 

[Clive Huggan]

Hello Kazimier,

With respect, we know all this. You should be telling this to Microsoft, not
to other users who agree with you anyway. Daiya and John gave excellent
advice on how to do that. They don't work for Microsoft, so can't do
anything useful for you.

Clive Huggan
============

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

I wanted to try this external dictionary advice, but whenever I try to choose dictionary from the options menu in my word2008 I get: "Microsoft word has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience". I must say I hate the word for Mac. It is the only application on my computer that keeps hanging and/or closing unexpectedly. It is obvious that MS treats us Mac users as lesser customers.

Consistent and reproducible problems in Word usually respond to one of
the standard troubleshooting measures, which you will find listed here:

http://word.mvps.org/Mac/TroubleshootingIndex.html

Work through them one by one until something helps. If nothing does,
post back. The most common culprit is a corrupted Normal template or
damaged Preferences file.

 

[John McGhie]

Well, I think you are intentionally misunderstanding what we are saying!

The spelling tool in Windows is a Windows application. If you run Windows
on your Mac, it will work just fine. But it is NOT a "list of words". It
is a compiled database. It requires Windows to run.

Now: It is not "difficult" to get it working on the Mac. It's merely
"expensive". You can't use the Windows one, you have to make a Mac one.
Which means paying all those licence fees to buy the dictionary, then
getting developers to code it up.

So far, there have not been sufficient sales of Mac computers in Poland to
justify the cost of making a Polish spell-checker. They make this decision
on the recommendation of the Polish Microsoft Office, for each new version.
If the Microsoft Office in Poland can convince head office that there will
be sufficient sales to find the cost next version, you will get it. Until
then: complain to Microsoft, not us.

Posting complaints in here is a complete waste of your time: we have seen it
all a hundred times before -- we're just users who have no more influence
with Microsoft than you do. And Microsoft is not reading this forum.

If you have a message for Microsoft, they will not see it at all unless you
use the Help>Send Feedback mechanism.

Sorry: But we can't change the world for you. We can only try to help you
with your difficulties. To help with your spelling crashes, I would need you
to be more exact about what you are trying to do. Word 2008 does not have
an "Options" menu, so I need you to tell me which menu you are using.

Cheers

I just do not get why is it so hard to get a spelling tool that has been
working for Windows for ages to (I mean the Polish dictionary) to work with
Mac. I am sorry I do not buy this third party developer explanation. I never
would have purchased the word for my Mac (which is extremely expensive
comparing to the Windows version) had I known it didn't support my language.
We are buying a well known and established product and want it to work. So we
do not care whether it is Microsoft themselves or some small developer that is
responsible for the lack of functionality. I wanted to try this external
dictionary advice, but whenever I try to choose dictionary from the options
menu in my word2008 I get: "Microsoft word has encountered a problem and needs
to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience". I must say I hate the word for
Mac. It is the only application on my computer that keeps hanging and/or
closing unexpectedly. It is obvious that MS treats us Mac users as lesser
customers.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Kazimierz Nowak]

Thanks to all you guys trying to help. Sorry if any of you felt bad, didn't mean to piss you off. It is just that in the newly discovered world of mac everything is so simple, obvious and effective that this thing with word is driving me mad. The problem I keep coming across is when I press "tools" then "dictionary" an then I get this message that word has encountered a problem and needs to close. I keep sending reports to MS as well as sending them my feedback. If only the gave a sh.. ;-( I would really love to be able not to use any MS products anymore but unfortunately neither pages nor Open Office seem to be working for me. I usually work on really long (100 or more pages) contracts drafted in two languages table and use the track changes function a lot as some 5 people around Europe are negotiating the text. Both pages and open office keep loosing format and only word seems to work. So I will take any advice you provide me with and thank you in advance.

 

[John McGhie]

On the Word menu, click the "About" item...

If the second line does not read "Version 12.1.1. (080522)" then you are
missing some updates. We did have an issue where Word would crash on access
to spelling, which was cured by one of the updates.

Go to Help>Check for Updates if that's the case.

Track Changes is absolutely legendary for causing document corruption, which
in turn leads to crashes. Particularly if some of the people editing the
document are not highly-skilled in Word

Try not to use Track Changes at all: instead, perform your edits then use
Compare Documents to mark the changes when you have finished. Much safer.

If you have to use Track Changes, make sure you are working in the .docx XML
format: it is very much more rugged and will survive track changes a lot
better.

Hope this helps

Thanks to all you guys trying to help. Sorry if any of you felt bad, didn't
mean to piss you off. It is just that in the newly discovered world of mac
everything is so simple, obvious and effective that this thing with word is
driving me mad. The problem I keep coming across is when I press "tools" then
"dictionary" an then I get this message that word has encountered a problem
and needs to close. I keep sending reports to MS as well as sending them my
feedback. If only the gave a sh.. ;-( I would really love to be able not to
use any MS products anymore but unfortunately neither pages nor Open Office
seem to be working for me. I usually work on really long (100 or more pages)
contracts drafted in two languages table and use the track changes function a
lot as some 5 people around Europe are negotiating the text. Both pages and
open office keep loosing format and only word seems to work. So I will take
any advice you provide me with and thank you in advance.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Kazimierz Nowak]

My word is absolutely up to date. The dictionary problem keeps appearing. I would love to be able to use a third party dictionary, just as suggested above, but just can not switch this thing on in word.

Thanks for the advice on the track changes issue. Unfortunately sometimes this option just can not be implemented especially when several people are working on the same doc and you have to see who inserted/deleted what, then giving each person a different colour is quite helpful.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Did you go through the Troubleshooting Index that I linked earlier?
Consistent crashes are usually fixable.

 

[ttarchal]

Hi, originator of this thread here again.

I must say that I am also experiencing Word crashes in 100% of cases when I click Tools / Dictionary. This is in the latest version of Word for Mac 12.1.1.

To my compatriot who absolutely must use Word to edit long documents with Track Changes I can only give advice that Word 2003 for Windows, run under Parallels, has Polish proofing and is rock stable Of course this necessitates buying Parallels, Windows and Office 2003, as well as some additional memory if you want all this to run with a reasonable speed. I'd love to wean myself off Parallels and Windows and that's why I asked about the Polish proofing in Microsoft Word, as this is one of the last things that keeps the Windows virtual machine on my Mac. Alas, it looks like it's going to stay like this for the foreseeable future.

Best,
Tomasz

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Tomasz:

Yes, that's the solution I use too. I need several features that Mac Word
does not have, so I run Word 2007 on this Mac.

One thing I have heard is that Word 2003/7 will run in WINE:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/darwine/

I believe that CrossOver will also work:
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

However, I have no experience with either of these. They run most
applications perfectly, but some applications have issues.

I would always recommend getting a cheap copy of Windows (Windows 2000 or
Windows XP are ideal) because that way you KNOW you have 100 per cent
compatibility with any application you want to run.

And of course, both of those operating systems will run in BootCamp as a
dual-boot. However, like yourself, I run them in Parallels because I want
to use the rest of the Mac with them.

Hope this helps

Hi, originator of this thread here again.

I must say that I am also experiencing Word crashes in 100% of cases when I
click Tools / Dictionary. This is in the latest version of Word for Mac
12.1.1.

To my compatriot who absolutely must use Word to edit long documents with
Track Changes I can only give advice that Word 2003 for Windows, run under
Parallels, has Polish proofing and is rock stable Of course this
necessitates buying Parallels, Windows and Office 2003, as well as some
additional memory if you want all this to run with a reasonable speed. I'd
love to wean myself off Parallels and Windows and that's why I asked about the
Polish proofing in Microsoft Word, as this is one of the last things that
keeps the Windows virtual machine on my Mac. Alas, it looks like it's going to
stay like this for the foreseeable future.

Best,
Tomasz

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi, originator of this thread here again.

I must say that I am also experiencing Word crashes in 100% of cases when I click Tools / Dictionary. This is in the latest version of Word for Mac 12.1.1.

Seriously, people. WHEN WORD CONSISTENTLY CRASHES FOR THE SAME REASON,
ONE OF THE STEPS LISTED ON THIS LINK WILL USUALLY FIX IT. How many times
do I have to say this?

http://word.mvps.org/Mac/TroubleshootingIndex.html

Work through them one by one until something helps. If nothing does,
post back. The most common culprit is a corrupted Normal template or
damaged Preferences file, so start there.

Incidentally, Tools | Dictionary has NOTHING to do with proofing.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

I wanted to try this external dictionary advice, but whenever I try to choose dictionary from the options menu in my word2008 I get: "Microsoft word has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience".

There is no options menu in Word. What are you actually selecting? If
it's Tools | Dictionary, it is not required to use the experiment
described here, so those crashes should not stop you from trying it:
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Languages.html

If it's not Tools | Dictionary, then you and ttarchal have two different
crashes.

 

[bgrefe]

My wife has a newer French Macbook Pro with an up to date version of Office
2008. Word constantly crashes on her also. Specifically the dictionary. She
is a doctoral student, so she is frequently using documents in different
languages and from different version of Word (Mac and Windows).

I have been through every step of the troubleshooting guide that you linked
below. Twice. The first time, the problem disappeared for about a week. The
2nd time, the problem disappeared for maybe 48 hours before it returned. But
return, it most certainly did, usually with colorful swearing in French.

So, use 'all caps' as much as you want, the troubleshooting guide is a
temporary fix at best. Microsoft needs to fix this problem. We have submitted
at lest 100 crash reports in the last two months. I frequently click on the
'check for updates' options in hopes that a new patch may be released.

 

[John McGhie]

Yeah, Spelling and Grammar in Office 2008 is a train-wreck. Daiya is as
frustrated as you are. There have been several fixes, but there are several
more to go.

As well as the crash reports (which they need...) all you can do is use
Help>Send Feedback to report this issue to Microsoft.

Note: There's no point in saying things like "Microsoft needs to fix this
problem". They don't: they already have our money

However, detailed descriptions of what you think may have caused the problem
will help them track down the issues and will speed up the fixes. If you
can leave the emotion out, and quantify the facts, that will help them fix
it.

This is not just "one" problem, it is a series of bugs. Some they have
already fixed, some they are working on, and some they do not have a cause
for. Your feedback will help them find and fix them, if it is detailed and
includes a working email address with which they can ask for more
information if they need it.

The crash reports give them a record of exactly where the program failed,
and what the CPU registers contained at the time. What it does not tell
them is what you were doing when the crash occurred. They can see what the
CPU was trying to do, but they cannot see why it was trying to do it, if
that makes sense.

Hope this helps

My wife has a newer French Macbook Pro with an up to date version of Office
2008. Word constantly crashes on her also. Specifically the dictionary. She
is a doctoral student, so she is frequently using documents in different
languages and from different version of Word (Mac and Windows).

I have been through every step of the troubleshooting guide that you linked
below. Twice. The first time, the problem disappeared for about a week. The
2nd time, the problem disappeared for maybe 48 hours before it returned. But
return, it most certainly did, usually with colorful swearing in French.

So, use 'all caps' as much as you want, the troubleshooting guide is a
temporary fix at best. Microsoft needs to fix this problem. We have submitted
at lest 100 crash reports in the last two months. I frequently click on the
'check for updates' options in hopes that a new patch may be released.

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:[email protected]