Autocorrection oddity

[Bibere]

Office for Mac, Word for Mac 2004 V 11.3.5.
This is in all probability a bug, but if anyone knows what might be
happening, I'd be grateful for a pointer.
I translate from German to English. Most times I translate directly into the
source text, something I've been doing successfully for years. What I do is
select all the text, change the language to English (UK) (which flags up all
the German words of course) and get down to work. But there's been one oddity
that's always foxed me:
Some docs (not all, and I cannot predict which ones - I can't swear to it,
but in some docs this phenomenon starts happening halfway through)
autocorrect the word "its" that I type to "ist" (the German for "is"). This
despite the fact that I have not asked word to autocorrect "its" to "ist".
When Word does this, it puts that little box thing by "ist", which
theoretically gives me the option to stop Word autocorrecting "its" to "ist".
That option is permanently ticked, so I cannot disable it. The problem is not
fatal, of course, just really annoying. Am I doing something wrong - have I
missed something? Other "real" autocorrections (where I have told Word to
autocorrect) work fine. Thanks.

 

[Carl Witthoft]

I saw something similar a while back in some documents a business
customer sent my business. It turned out that part, but not all, of the
document was tagged to use the French spellcheck& dictionary rather than
the English (AMerican) one.

I don't remember exactly how I convinced Word to apply English to the
entire document.

 

[Bibere]

Hi Carl, I've tried every which way to 'convince' Word, short of taking a
hammer to it (which would heart my Mac more than Word of course!). It's just
that one word. Ho hum.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

To convince Word everything is English, select all and use Tools |
Language to apply English. Language operates like formatting, rather
than by assigning a dictionary. This means that if you put the cursor
right after a German word, hit space or enter, and keep typing, your new
text will carry German lang formatting as well.

But you did that, Bibere. Hmmm. And it sounds like you are pretty on top
of how Word operates with regard to spelling (90% of the people who post
here about spelling are suffering from misconceptions about how it's
supposed to work).

Re original problem--I would assume it's a language issue--Word will
keep a separate AutoCorrect list for any language you use. Is it
possible that you are copying text from somewhere that carries German
formatting? Sometimes stuff off the web can come in with weird tags.
Select All doesn't select the header/footer, so copying from there could
carry German--and ooh, the same probably applies to footnotes/endnotes.
Are you copying from notes into text?

Since you have used German, I'm sure there is an active German
AutoCorrect list on your computer (at
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Microsoft Office ACL [German], I think,
where ~ is short for your user account). I would suspect that "its" to
"ist" is one of the default entries in it. German language formatting
*should* be the thing that tells it to activate for certain words in
certain documents.

Does that offer any suggestions for things you might test? Either now,
or the next time you see it happen.

Next time you see it happen, put the cursor in the word (don't select
anything), go to Tools | Language, and see what is selected.

Daiya

 

[Bibere]

Hiya Daiya (it rhymes!)

Yup, much of the text that reaches me is indeed formatted as German language
text. And as you surmised, I am on top of the spelling game in Word! Many
thanks for the clues - I'll not see if there's a correlation between the
German formatting and the auto-correction foible and keep you wonderful guys
posted. Merry Christmas!

To convince Word everything is English, select all and use Tools |
Language to apply English. Language operates like formatting, rather
than by assigning a dictionary. This means that if you put the cursor
right after a German word, hit space or enter, and keep typing, your new
text will carry German lang formatting as well.

But you did that, Bibere. Hmmm. And it sounds like you are pretty on top
of how Word operates with regard to spelling (90% of the people who post
here about spelling are suffering from misconceptions about how it's
supposed to work).

Re original problem--I would assume it's a language issue--Word will
keep a separate AutoCorrect list for any language you use. Is it
possible that you are copying text from somewhere that carries German
formatting? Sometimes stuff off the web can come in with weird tags.
Select All doesn't select the header/footer, so copying from there could
carry German--and ooh, the same probably applies to footnotes/endnotes.
Are you copying from notes into text?

Since you have used German, I'm sure there is an active German
AutoCorrect list on your computer (at
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Microsoft Office ACL [German], I think,
where ~ is short for your user account). I would suspect that "its" to
"ist" is one of the default entries in it. German language formatting
*should* be the thing that tells it to activate for certain words in
certain documents.

Does that offer any suggestions for things you might test? Either now,
or the next time you see it happen.

Next time you see it happen, put the cursor in the word (don't select
anything), go to Tools | Language, and see what is selected.

Daiya

Hi Carl, I've tried every which way to 'convince' Word, short of taking a
hammer to it (which would heart my Mac more than Word of course!). It's just
that one word. Ho hum.

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