Dictionary hosed? So frustrating!

[Michael Wehrmeister]

For no reason whatsoever (that I can determine), Word 2004 doesn't seem to
find my Dictionary. It gives me an error message when I launch and if I
spell something wrong I get in an endless loop which I have to force quit.
Thankfully I can deselect the auto-spell check. I have not changed anything
on this machine to warrant this strangeness. I have tried to add the
dictionary through the preferences and when I select "add" I get the endless
spinning beachball and have to force-quit. The error message says to use the
Microsoft Office Installer to reinstall the dictionary which doesn't seem to
exist (nor do I ever remember seeing it). I've deleted the plist pref file
as well as copied the dictionary to the prefs folder to no avail. I've
checked to make sure everything is set to "English". What am I missing? Can
I delete another pref file? I'm going nuts!

Thanks,
Mike

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Michael:

I need the exact text of the error message.

Word has two dictionaries for each language, the Main dictionary ad the
Custom dictionary.

I suspect it's your MAIN dictionary that has gone missing, in which case you
actually do need to reinstall it.

It's named "English Dictionary: and it should be in folder
Applications:Microsoft Office 2004:Shared Applictionsroofing Tools...

The settings on the Spelling dialog have nothing to do with this one: it
should have been installed by default and it is called into play by the
language of the text you are spelling.

Cheers

For no reason whatsoever (that I can determine), Word 2004 doesn't seem to
find my Dictionary. It gives me an error message when I launch and if I
spell something wrong I get in an endless loop which I have to force quit.
Thankfully I can deselect the auto-spell check. I have not changed anything
on this machine to warrant this strangeness. I have tried to add the
dictionary through the preferences and when I select "add" I get the endless
spinning beachball and have to force-quit. The error message says to use the
Microsoft Office Installer to reinstall the dictionary which doesn't seem to
exist (nor do I ever remember seeing it). I've deleted the plist pref file
as well as copied the dictionary to the prefs folder to no avail. I've
checked to make sure everything is set to "English". What am I missing? Can
I delete another pref file? I'm going nuts!

Thanks,
Mike

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John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]