Dictionaries for Office v.X

[delmonaco]

Hi.

I would like to install various dictionaries (Italian, Spanish etc..)
in Office v.X, OS 10.3.9, but I simply can't find them -looked for them
everywhere!! Mactopia, P2P etc..

I imagine they must exist, as there are country-specific versions of
the software...does anyone know WHERE I can find such dictionaries?

Thanks.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Did you look on the Office X CD, including in the Value Pack?

I don't remember installing Office X, but I believe the way the Mac version
works is that the US version has almost all the proofing tools. However,
they may not be set for a default install, so you may need to go back and
install them. If you installed them, they should show up in apps/ms office
x/shared applications/proofing tools.

If you installed them, however, you need to tell Word what language the text
is to get Word to use them. To do so, select text, go to Tools | Language,
and apply a language. If you do this a lot, there are faster ways, post
back.

Note that some of the Office X updates made a difference to the French and
Italian proofing tools, be sure you are updated all the way to 10.1.6. The
About number is not reliable, see here for how to tell:
http://www.mcgimpsey.com/macoffice/office/vxversions.html

 

[delmonaco]

Thank you Daya Mitchell...very helpful!! =)

I hadn't thought of looking in the CD because I guess I have a
'misconception' of Microsoft as being 'exploitive and tight-minded'!!
They provided the proofing tools though portuguese is missing...=)

But as far as dictionaries, only english...though now I can check
spelling, grammar and thesaurus in various other languages (proofing
tools)...there is an icon -english dictionary- in the Office folder.
And that's it.

Thanks again...

Ps. I had already updated to 10.1.6...

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Sorry, I saw mention of foreign languages and automatically thought proofing
tools, and skipped over the whole meaning of "dictionary".

In my installed Office X there are proofing tools for Portuguese and
Brazilian Portuguese, though. So you should have them too.

There are also files that are labeled plain [language] dictionary (not
"spelling dictionary" and "hyphenation dictionary") other than English, but
they don't appear to work to give definitions, neither via right-click
Define, nor Tools | Dictionary. No idea what they do.

I'm sure there must be third-party programs that do definitions, but not
sure which are used/recommended on macs, or how much they might cost.

Daiya

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

There are also files that are labeled plain [language] dictionary (not
"spelling dictionary" and "hyphenation dictionary") other than English, but
they don't appear to work to give definitions, neither via right-click
Define, nor Tools | Dictionary. No idea what they do.

Those are compendia of words in other languages used for spell-checking in
those languages. These files were called "Dictionaries" way back in Outlook
Express, Word 5, 6, 98 etc. and even Entourage 2001 before the "definitions"
Dictionary was included in Office. It leads to inevitable confusion
nowadays.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Sorry, I saw mention of foreign languages and automatically thought proofing
tools, and skipped over the whole meaning of "dictionary".

In my installed Office X there are proofing tools for Portuguese and
Brazilian Portuguese, though. So you should have them too.

Hum... That looks more like the Office 2004 CD... I sure don't have it
in my Office X CD and I quite remember a *bunch* of people complaining
about this in the Word newsgroup :-\

There are also files that are labeled plain [language] dictionary (not
"spelling dictionary" and "hyphenation dictionary") other than English, but
they don't appear to work to give definitions, neither via right-click
Define, nor Tools | Dictionary. No idea what they do.

Yeahh, we've all complained vocally about that in the French newsgroup
for Office... There is no other dictionarry than the English one... Even
in Office 2004. The worst thing is that as far as I've understood it the
Office Dictionary is based on Encarta. There are sure many other Encarta
dictionaries out there :-(

Corentin

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

In my installed Office X there are proofing tools for Portuguese and

Hum... That looks more like the Office 2004 CD... I sure don't have it
in my Office X CD and I quite remember a *bunch* of people complaining
about this in the Word newsgroup :-\

Yep, my mistake. I did check, but I traced the path from the wrong
Applications folder and didn't notice.

Would it work backward? To just put the Portuguese proofing tools from
Office 2004 in the Office X folders?

There are also files that are labeled plain [language] dictionary (not
"spelling dictionary" and "hyphenation dictionary") other than English, but
they don't appear to work to give definitions, neither via right-click
Define, nor Tools | Dictionary. No idea what they do.

Yeahh, we've all complained vocally about that in the French newsgroup
for Office... There is no other dictionarry than the English one... Even
in Office 2004. The worst thing is that as far as I've understood it the
Office Dictionary is based on Encarta. There are sure many other Encarta
dictionaries out there :-(

So if you purchase a country-specific version of Office, are you just
getting less features? No definitions at all? That's really, um,
aggravating--to be mild.

Daiya

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Would it work backward? To just put the Portuguese proofing tools from
Office 2004 in the Office X folders?

I've never tried (when I installed Office 2004, I trashed X for good
).

It might.....

[...]

So if you purchase a country-specific version of Office, are you just
getting less features? No definitions at all? That's really, um,
aggravating--to be mild.

You're paying more (even though the $ went down soooo much in the past
few years) and you're getting less.
Same thing with MacOS X actually (which is really getting on my nerves
since there is absolutely no differnce between the US and the French CD
-- it's just much much cheaper to get the US version, even adding S&H -
the contrast is even more stricking for Adobe products).

Corentin

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Would it work backward? To just put the Portuguese proofing tools from

I've never tried (when I installed Office 2004, I trashed X for good
).

It might.....

I have Office X locked away in another user account. When I have some
excess computer curiosity, maybe I'll try. Since you can take ClipArt and
Assistants from Office 2001 and put them in Office 2004, a reverse parallel
is probably worth the little time it'd take to test.

Daiya

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I have Office X locked away in another user account. When I have some
excess computer curiosity, maybe I'll try. Since you can take ClipArt and
Assistants from Office 2001 and put them in Office 2004, a reverse parallel
is probably worth the little time it'd take to test.

Yeah but cliparts and assistant are rather simple files. Proofing tools
are extraordinarly complex (usually). Let's hope the format hasn't
chaged )
(though I wonder how legal it would be for someone with Office X to
"borrow" the proofing tools from Offia'ce 2004 from someone else...).

Corentin

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

I have Office X locked away in another user account. When I have some

Yeah but cliparts and assistant are rather simple files. Proofing tools
are extraordinarly complex (usually). Let's hope the format hasn't
chaged )

Hmm. I can't quite tell. I copied the files over. Word launched fine. I
was able to select text and mark it as Portuguese and Brazilian. When I
went to Tools | Spelling & Grammar, I got a little message about "Word
cannot find the grammar file for Portuguese" but it appeared to be checking
the spelling, and suggested Te and Ti for The. I think it would work better
if I had some actual Portuguese to test it on.

Since I don't see any Portuguese grammar files in Office 2004 anyhow, I'm
thinking that message was only to be expected.

So this is the sentence I used, a few times:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
I tagged one sentence as Portuguese and another as Brazilian. Then I ran
Tools | Spelling & Grammar. It seemed to me as though both Word X and Word
2004 produced the same spelling suggestions. I don't think I got grammar
suggestions in either version. In both versions I got noticeably more
suggestions for Portuguese than for Brazilian Portuguese.

Silly me, I had forgotten to check in Office X whether I could tag text as
Portuguese or Brazilian before I added the files. Okay, I removed the files
and went back--I could tag text, without any proofing tools, but the
spellcheck didn't find anything.

DM

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

It seemed to me as though both Word X and Word
2004 produced the same spelling suggestions. I don't think I got grammar
suggestions in either version. In both versions I got noticeably more
suggestions for Portuguese than for Brazilian Portuguese.

Very interesting indeed... I guess havong spelling-cheking only is a
start... It still is much better than nothing at all :_(

Thanks for testing it out Daiya )

Corentin

 

[delmonaco]

Wow!! You really reach out to give help. I am impressed!!

I will certainly look into the Encarta sugestion, Corentin, as you are
probably right. I didn't think the improvements in Office 2004 were big
enough for me to spend the extra cash...yet. Lets see when a new
version comes out. Yes, I have double-checked and there are no
portuguese proofing tools in the v.X install CD.

Daiya, from what you described...I am sorry, but your portuguese
proofing is not doing much for you!! =) So, here is a sentence for you
to try:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
A ligeira raposa marrom pula sobre o cachorro preguiçoso.

This is an accurate portuguese (Brazilian) translation. Put the
mistakes wherever you see fit.

Many Thanks to you both!

Thanks...

 

[delmonaco]

Hello, again...

I also thought of asking you if you know of any groups which discuss
Virtual PC 7 and Final Draft 7...I am having issues with them.

Thanks.=)

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I also thought of asking you if you know of any groups which discuss
Virtual PC 7

microsoft.public.mac.virtualpc

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Wow!! You really reach out to give help. I am impressed!!

Well, don't underestimate the power of the quest for pure knowledge (i.e.,
idle curiosity and procrastination).

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
A ligeira raposa marrom pula sobre o cachorro preguiçoso.

This is an accurate portuguese (Brazilian) translation. Put the
mistakes wherever you see fit.

I will play with that later on and report back.

Daiya

 

[Del Monaco]

Daiya...

As you can probably tell, this is my first google group.

Indeed, I did underestimate this virtual space as a quest for
knowledge...thanks for dropping the answer about virtualpc group at my
other topic..and thanks too to McGimpsey. =)

Have fun with the portuguese proofing..if you need more material, just
ask..

Cheers.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

As you can probably tell, this is my first google group.

And it's not even hosted by Google )
Google offers a webpage as a front-end for what is called Usenet.

You can access the same groups through the news server your ISP offers
(or in the case of the MS newsgroups, through the MS public server)
through any news-client (Entoruage offers newsgroups support as well,
but there are dedicated applications out there like MT-Newswatcher,
Unisson or MacSoup for instance).

Corentin

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

A ligeira raposa marrom pula sobre o cachorro preguiçoso.

This is an accurate portuguese (Brazilian) translation. Put the
mistakes wherever you see fit.

Okay, I tagged the sentence as Portuguese (Brazilian) and entered a few
spelling mistakes (ligiera, marom, cachoro). Modified Word X suggested all
the proper words. Right-click also offered a lot of synonyms that looked
Portuguese, though the only ones I could tell seemed correct were those for
quick and lazy. I think we can conclude this works fine.

Daiya

 

[Del Monaco]

OK!

Well, proofing works fine for me too...but hey, let's leave the
semantics behind. I have been looking to buy other software as
'dictionary'. It appears Tiger will have quite a few of them, as
widgets, on dashboard!! Sounds great!! Looking forward to Tiger's
arrival.

I am glad my portuguese was of any use to you, Daiya. I will try the
Mac version of right-clicking, and experiment with the proofing
dictionaries provided in the Office v. X CD. Will report soon...though,
unfortunately, Portuguese is not one of them! =( Any clues as to
where I can find it?

Thanks.