Comprehensive spelling

[terryc]

I've upgraded to Office 2007. I have a comprehensive spelling disk (medical
terminology) for Word 6.0 and it won't install without 6.0 installed. Any
ideas? Or is there a way to import medical terminology into a custom
dictionary?

 

[Jay Freedman]

I've upgraded to Office 2007. I have a comprehensive spelling disk
(medical terminology) for Word 6.0 and it won't install without 6.0
installed. Any ideas? Or is there a way to import medical terminology
into a custom dictionary?

That depends on the format in which the spelling disk stores its word list.

If it's a plain text file, or if you can export it to a plain text file,
then you can make a copy and open it in Notepad. Use the Save As command and
set the Encoding dropdown to Unicode (Word 2007 requires Unicode, not ANSI),
and save it into the Proofing folder under your profile that also contains
Custom.dic (exact location depends on your Windows version). The file name
can be anything you choose. Use the Word Options > Proofing > Custom
Dictionaries dialog to add the new dictionary.

If, as is more likely, the spelling disk stores the word list in a
proprietary binary format, and if it has no export capability, then you
can't do anything with it. You could see if the publisher offers an
upgrade -- but if the program is as old as Word 6.0, that isn't very likely
either.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

What about having Word 6.0 and Word2007 installed simultaneously --
perhaps with the sort of registry hack that lets you run 2003 and 2007
side by side?

 

[Jay Freedman]

I think the object of the exercise is to use the medical dictionary in Word
2007. I don't know whether the dictionary in its original form would work
with 2007 -- it's hard to make software forward-compatible with stuff that
hadn't been invented yet.

It would probably be simple to get Word 6.0 and 2007 running simultaneously,
and you probably wouldn't need any registry hack because I don't think they
use any of the same registry keys. I just don't think it would help in this
case.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

terryc said it will install when Word 6.0 is installed, so maybe it
can be opened in Word 6.0 and its data saved in a format that 2007 can
read?

 

[terryc]

Thanks to all who responded. There is a file named mssp2enc.lex and its type
is "dictionary file" and another file hy_en.le$ file type "LE$ file" in the
tools folder on the floppy. Is there a program that can read the .lex file?

 

[Jay Freedman]

A file with a .lex extension is a binary-format "lexicon" or dictionary
file. It doesn't contain lists of words in any form you can see. Office 2007
has .lex files for its speller (in the folder C:\Program Files\Common
Files\Microsoft Shared\Proof), but their names contain the number 3 instead
of 2, indicating a later format. The mssp2 file is not compatible with Word
2007.

You can try reinstalling Word 6.0 long enough to get the spelling program to
install, and then look for a way to export its words to a plain text file. I
suspect, though, that there is no such way.

As I said before, your best course is to try to get an upgrade of the
program. Failing that, look for a different medical dictionary program, or
at least a word list that you can download and put into a custom dictionary.

 

[WhiteRat]

Hi Terryc,

I've used the downloadable dictionary file from http://rianjs.net/medic for
a little over a year now, and have found it to be quite adequate for my
needs. Apparently others do as well. I downloaded the unicode version for
Word 2007, put it in my C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application
Data\Microsoft\UProof directory, and then added it as a custom dictionary
from the Word options (under Proofing). I do run into a term from time to
time that's not included, but for the most part I'm more often surprised at
just how comprehensive it actually is.

Hope this helps

David