Custom Dictionary

[Matt Lygo]

Hi there

I am having a strange problem with Excel. Whenever I select 'Spelling' from
the Tools menu I receive an error message saying "The word could not be
added to the custom spelling dictionary. The word contains invalid
characters."

Any ideas on what I can do to prevent this?

Thanks

Matt
(Excel 2008 12.1.7, OSX 10.5.7)

 

[jul.demierre]

Hi,

This is probably due to incorrect character in your custom dictionary.
The easiest way to correct your problem would be to delete the custom
dictionary and let excel recreate it.

The file is at: <user>:Libraryreferences:Microsoft:Office 2008:

I hope it helps,

Julien

 

[CyberTaz]

I'm not sure that's the best recommendation... What you suggest will cause a
new Custom Dictionary *file* to be created but (a) not by Excel & most
importantly (b) that file will have no content -- IOW, any existing entries
will be lost. Instead, it might be preferable to edit the Custom Dictionary.

Matt:

The file is actually created & maintained by Word but shared by the other
Office apps. You can use Word to create a new Custom Dictionary file if you
take a look here: <http://word.mvps.org/mac/SpellCheck.html> then copy the
content from the old file to the new. Also, it will sometimes correct
problems with the current Custom Dictionary file if you simply drag it to
the Word icon in the Dock.

OTOH, if you aren't concerned about losing the content of it by all means
follow Julien's suggestion

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Matt Lygo]

Thanks for your advice (and Julien)

I finally did solve the problem, but it took a little effort. I first of
all copied the original custom dictionary and then deleted it in Word and
created a new one. This was fine, but when I then opened the original and
copied / pasted the contents into the new file, I experienced the same
problem, with Excel complaining about "invalid characters".

I pasted the contents into TextWrangler to see if that would throw any
light, but it didn't show anything amiss (although to be fair I don't know
enough about TextWrangler to be certain I used it to it's best abilities).
I work a lot with Filemaker, so pasted the contents of the dictionary into a
text field in a database. Filemaker's spell checker then auto flagged every
word that had an 'i' character, but only underlined that one character in
the word. Closer inspection showed that there was a trailing invisible
character after every letter 'i'. I don't know what that character was, but
I was able to strip it out and the resulting text, when pasted back into the
custom dictionary, was ok.

I suppose in many cases it would be simpler to recreate the entries by hand,
but I had about 4 pages of custom entries.

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction, and I hope my solution
may help others in the same situation.

Matt