Bug setting spelling language in Word 2007

[Nik]

I believe there is a bug within Word 2007 regarding setting the default
spelling language to anything other than US English.

Every setting and region on my PC is set to English UK, yet despite my
changing the default language for Word 2007 to English (United Kingdom) it
resets to English (United States).

Many other people have reported the same things judging by a Google search
and I would respectfully ask that this bug be investigated if at all
possible. I would be very willing and interested in getting involved if I can
assist.

Kind regards,

Nick Kirby

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http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...a&dg=microsoft.public.word.application.errors

 

[Nik]

Did the first one - thrice. No effect.

I shall try the second - but it is a farce. You should not need to uninstall
other languages to ensure that a user defined one is set. This is clearly a
problem.

By uninstall I assume you mean through Start | Office ...|Language settings
remove English US from the list? I do, repeatedly. It replaces itself as an
option.

I've set it under Word Options | Proofing and yes, sometimes the programme
starts using English (United Kingdom) (which is crackers because the spelling
for the programme is in American - center is incorrect. it should be centre)
but then get into about three paragraphs or try to paste in some text from
the web or another text document (like notepad, which has no language
settings or even content tags and bang, back to american.

I've even replicated this by opening two blank word documents, setting both
to English and copying text from one to another. Both then revert to
american. It is deeply frustrating!

 

[Terry Farrell]

Also deeply something is wrong. It shouldn't happen and certainly doesn't
happen on any system I use. Regardless of language of the source, it does
not change the language in the document I paste it to. Something else is
going on here. Are you certain that when you change the default, it is saved
to normal.dotm and if it is, are you sure you only have one normal.dotm?

Terry

 

[Nik]

I'm certainly willing to try anything - I am not the only person finding this
issue, as a Google search will show.

I searched for normal.dotm and windows couldn't find anythnig so a search
for location of normal.dotm pointed that normal.dotm should be under:

\%username%\appdata\roaming\microsoft\office.

There is no normal.dotm present in this directory.

 

[Nik]

An update - there is a normal.dotm file within the templates directory.
There is only one of these such files present.

 

[Terry Farrell]

You need to enable System and Hidden files under Search options to find
normal.dotm. But as you found, it is in
\%username%\appdata\roaming\microsoft\templates by default.

Another possible reason is that one or more of your Styles have been set to
Automatically Update which results in it taking on a new language when
pasting in another language. Make sure that Styles are not set to
Automatically Update.

Terry

 

[Nick]

How could a style being set to automatically update (update what?) affect the spelling language? If
you point me towards how to check I will.

As a minor aside I created a simple document with a title, heading and paragraph format and set
styles for each one.

The language remained set at UK English. Closing that file and opening another reverts the language
to US. Why is the language not retained globally?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I suspect Terry is (a) thinking that if US English crept into a paragraph,
Word might take this as leave to automatically update that style to US
English and (b) perhaps confusing this with the "Detect language
automatically" setting in the Language dialog, which should be a good thing
but generally turns out not to be.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Nick]

I suspect Terry is (a) thinking that if US English crept into a
paragraph, Word might take this as leave to automatically update that
style to US English and (b) perhaps confusing this with the "Detect
language automatically" setting in the Language dialog, which should be
a good thing but generally turns out not to be.

Yesterday I sat down to write a bit more of my thesis and had to set the language to UK English. The
detect language automatically was off - as previously suggested.

This morning the damned thing is set to US English. It should not be. This is a bug in the
programme, or at the very least an obtuse error condition.

 

[Terry Farrell]

It isn't a Word problem as such: something else must be at work. Just typing
away at a document does not randomly reset the spelling language. Do you
have any utility that may be blocking registry changes or restoring the
registry on reboot? Have you got any extra proofing tools such as specialist
dictionaries installed? In the Control Panel under Regional and Language
settings, is the keyboard definitely set to English UK? Has English US
keyboard been removed: if not, innocently pressing the Switch Language
keyboard combination will change the language? You can disable or remove
anything you don't want.

Terry

 

[Nick]

Region, keyboard and clock are both set to UK. Time is GMT. There is nothing blocking the registry
at all.

There are no unusual dictionaries beyond custom.dic with some unique entries I've added regarding my
writing.

Default interface language is English (however I do not trust this as the spellings are in american
(center, for example) - this is definitely NOT English.

I cannot remove US English from the Microsoft Office Language settings. Removing it is fine - until
it replaces itself.

 

[Terry Farrell]

Yes, 'center' is English US and if you have English UK selected, it should
be marked as an error. The reasons for it not being marked as an error are:

1. Center has been added to the Custom dictionary or to Exclusions
2. Spell checking as you type has been disabled
3. Hide spelling errors in this document has been enabled
4. The Style has been set to No Proofing or English US

If you have set up the Language as suggested, Word does not arbitrarily
switch to another language. I open many English US documents sent to me on
in my version of Word and it remains set to English UK - although I
invariably see masses of red underlines! It is worth pursuing your system
settings as this should not be happening.

Terry

 

[Nick]

Righto - I've gone through:

1. Most definitely not!
2. Is on
3. Spelling errors are shown.
4. Where can I check this?

That a graphic style should have any impact upon language is in itself an error. Why would it?

The issue isn't just the spelling changing from document to document - in fact I cannot track it
down Sometimes the spelling changes within the document.

Copying in from another editor - spelling changes
Cutting out - spelling changes.
Saving the document - spelling changes.
Removing English US from the Language settings - the language replaces itself.
Set a document to use UK English only - click spell check - checks in American.
Save the document. Close Word. Re-open same document with language set to UK English and it will
open to use American.

I've tried a myriad combinations to resolve or at least track down the why this is happening to
provide more information but I cannot - and the suggestions others provide do not solve the problem.

Very genuinely I'll do anything I can to resolve this, but I believe this issue is a bug.

Nick

 

[Nick]

I don't know if this is helpful, however I checked the styles setting "Language" and set this to UK
English.

I would advocate that a graphic style has no import whatsoever on the language and that this should
really be altered, or at least the language set globally for everything.

Now, this kept the document in UK English for the random text I typed, styles and headings I applied
etc.

Now, copying text from the amazon.co.uk website (a book review) and pasting into word sets the
language to US English.

I changed the paragraph style language to UK English, deleted the text and pasted it again. It was
still set to US English.

So the global language setting doesn't work, or the styles ignore it. Why does the language not
"stay removed" from Office | Language Settings?

Apologies if I sound grumpy. I am extremely grateful for your on-going assistance and kind patience.

Nick

 

[Terry Farrell]

Would you let me know which book review you copied (send me the link please)
so that I can try this out using the same page from Amazon. Also, I guess
that you copied the book image too?

Terry

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I changed the paragraph style language to UK English, deleted the text and

pasted it again. It was still set to US English.

If this is what you actually did, then of course the language would still be
US English. Unless you *cut* the text and then pasted, what you were pasting
was the same thing you pasted the first time; deleting text doesn't change
what's on the Clipboard.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Nik]

Hello,

Yes, Office is fully up to date.

I've tried copying from this review:

http://tinyurl.com/dn5k75

and here:

http://tinyurl.com/dycspq

Both get reset to US English.

I'm bewildered why copying and pasting should be different to cut and paste.
Surely if Word is set to use only English then it won't matter what is
copied, pasted, but, or anything into it. The default language should never
change?

Also, when I remove US English from the list under Start | Office | Language
settings why does it replace itself?


I'm still a bit worried that the styles don't use the global language. They
should, unless set otherwise.

Please - there is a problem here that lots of people (on this forum -
http://tinyurl.com/djm6ve ) who are having this same problem. Could you ask
the developers if they know about it/if there's a workaround?

 

[Terry Farrell]

I've pasted both those pages into Word. For each page Word warns me that the
contents of the clipboard will paste many different styles, do I want to use
normal style instead: I answered NO to make sure that all the styles were
unchanged. My default language remained English UK and words such as 'humor
marvelous and fulfillment' were underlined as errors. (Unfortunately, so
were many, many other spelling errors making it obvious that Amazon don't
use a spell checker when creating their pages!)

If Word is switching to English US, there is something else at work on your
computer.

Would you try testing this in Word Safe Mode. From Start | Run (winkey+R),
type in

winword /a

and press enter. This opens Word in Safe Mode. Please paste one of those
pages into Word now and see if the language is still affected.

Terry

 

[Nick]

Not sure what this would show, however the language does remain set at UK English, however I didn't
get any notification of the change in styles (in safe mode or normal mode). Is this relevant to the
problem?

For both pages I copied (Ctrl V) instead of Cut (Ctrl X) the text then pasted using Ctrl V. I doubt
it's relevant but should mention.

What does this mean?

Noticing none of the text had changed from UK English I got a bit excited and entered random text by
keyboard and using =rand(3,2) and this immediately set the language to US English. On a hunch I
checked the style and it is using US English. Changing this language reverted back to UK English.

If possible, please, could this be removed? Style should be removed from content. It isn't sensible
for the way text looks to affect the language it is written in.

Also, the US English spelling option was added back into the list under Language settings for the
nth time.

 

[Nick]

Not sure what this would show, however the language does remain set at
UK English, however I didn't get any notification of the change in
styles (in safe mode or normal mode). Is this relevant to the problem?

For both pages I copied (Ctrl V) instead of Cut (Ctrl X) the text then
pasted using Ctrl V. I doubt it's relevant but should mention.

What does this mean?

Noticing none of the text had changed from UK English I got a bit
excited and entered random text by keyboard and using =rand(3,2) and
this immediately set the language to US English. On a hunch I checked
the style and it is using US English. Changing this language reverted
back to UK English.

If possible, please, could this be removed? Style should be removed from
content. It isn't sensible for the way text looks to affect the language
it is written in.

Also, the US English spelling option was added back into the list under
Language settings for the nth time.

I consider these settings to be a bug.

1. Styles should not overwrite the default language. I understand this is intentional but then this
setting should (must) be overwritten by the global language settings.

2. Once removed the language "English US" should not add itself back into the available editing
languages list.

I would be very grateful if you could bring these to the attention of the Office developers.

Kind regards,

Nick