Hi Ritter197,
The one thing I changed is that I DID click on the little box to
"automatically detect the language" and what you know -- it all of a sudden
works. At least last night and all day to-day. I write in both English and
German and did a number of letters and each time it detected and when I used
Tools to check spelling, it did just that WITHOUT me first selecting the
language, which I had always done before last night.
I also had for weeks tried the Ctl and A to select all, then select
language, then Spell checking and then it almost always went back to
English. At those times I also had the box UNCHECKED to check language
automatically.
Now I just hope that all stays the way it is right now.
I'll cross my fingers and hold my thumbs... Generally, auto-detect for language
is a chancy thing, but if it works for you, then by all means
Just a side note on the "techy stuff" going on behind the scenes here, in case
you ever do need to troubleshoot again. It's going to begin by repeating what's
in my article, but, if you have the time, do skim through to the conclusions at
the end.
1. When you start a new document, Word will compare its language default to the
Windows language.
2. If they match, Word will use the language defined by the Normal style of the
current template (usually, Normal.dot, unless you selected a different
template)
3. If they do NOT match, the Windows default language will be applied OVER the
Word default. ("Direct formatting")
This is the situation that usually causes the most problems, at least for
"document professionals", who expect to control the format with styles.
However, it's possible that this could be exactly what caused your problems,
especially now that, on reading your explanation above, I can picture how you
work.
Assuming your system is "language synchronized", all styles you use will be
picking up the Word default language, unless you've specified differently. So,
if you do Ctrl+A, then select a language, that will be applied over the style's
setting (like applying BOLD).
If you then apply, say, Heading 1, that will use the Word default language.
IOW, the language will "revert". And if you press Enter at the end of that
paragraph, the style of the new paragraph is automatically "Normal", and again
will have the Word default style.
Does that sound like what you were experiencing?
In this case, a "document professional" would have a set of templates and/or
style that are language-specific (i.e. one set for English, the other for
German) and choose the appropriate one as required. S/he would never, ever
select text and apply the style from Tools/Language/SEt language.
Obviously, this is more work than many who simply want to type and spellcheck
letters (rather than writing a handbook that has to be maintained over years,
say) care to deal with. That's the main reason MS introduced language
auto-detection, although it doesn't always work reliably for everyone
(English/French is a big problem, probably because many words are so similar).
And, if you rely on controlling languages using styles, the way auto-detect
works is a real PITA.
Unfortunately for you, most of the people who assist in these groups are
"professional documentation" oriented, which is why we never twigged before now
as to how and why you were running into problems. Ironically, an MS support
person probably would have hit on it immediately
I'm sorry it took so long to get this straightened out, and sincerely hope it
works well for you from here on!
Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org
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