Migrating custom dictionary and auto correct entries from PC to Mac

[anantham]

Hi,
I am a new switcher to the Mac platform and am trying to migrate my
PC stuff to the Mac. Can anyone here please point me to a resource on
how i can migrate my Office 2003 settings to my Mac? In particular I
would like to migrate my custom dictionary and autocorrect entries to
my Office 2004 on the Mac. Any help is deeply appreciated.
Best regards,
-Partha

 

[little_creature]

If you are looking for custom disctionary-it's just text file located on
Windows in aplication data>micorsoft>proof
Take the custom.dic there and copy it somewhere on your Mac. Then open Mac
Word go to Preferences„spelling and grammar„custom dictionary and locate to
your copied custom.dic. You can specify in which language the words in
custom dictionary are by selecting language in the combo box bellow.

To maintain your setting from Normal.doc you can just copy this file form PC
from PC: Documents and settings>Application Data>Microsoft>Templates
To Mac: ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Normal

Accordingly you can move personal.xls for excel:
PC: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application
Data\Microsoft\Excel\XLStart folder

Mac: Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Startup/Excel

and pot templates for powerpoint...

However if you have any VBA macros they might not run on Mac without some
changes - some properties are not supported. More in the nextversion of Mac
Office VBA will not be included at all.

Tip: the quickest way how to navigate to application data folder on PC:

the quickest way to go to application data folder is to hit WINDOWS key +R
which is alternative to START>run and type there %AppData% and hit OK. This
will magically transport you to application data folder)

If you cannot see your Normal.dot there then it's probably hidden -it's some
protection of Win to prevent you deleting "system" files. To see it, you
need to enable showing of hidden files which is done:
Control Panel> folder settings> View tab>Show Hidden Files and Folders

 

[anantham]

Many many thanks for the quick response! Will my auto correct entries
migrate if i transfer the Normal.doc file as you described? I mean are
my auto correct entries saved in the Normal.doc file? Many thanks
again.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

To maintain your setting from Normal.doc you can just copy this file form PC
from PC: Documents and settings>Application Data>Microsoft>Templates
To Mac: ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Normal

Little_Creature, have you tried this? I'm superstitious about trying to
force a Normal created by WinWord into MacWord. There are minor
differences, for instance, WinWord uses Normal.dot and MacWord refuses
to use the extension for Normal. What about putting it into Word's
startup folder to be a global template?

Partha--Normal.dot holds the default settings for new documents, which
are easy enough to reset. It also holds macros and keyboard shortcuts
you may have created. If some of the AutoCorrects you created were
*formatted*, then those are stored in Normal.dot. Otherwise, the
AutoCorrects are in a separate file altogether and hopefully John McGhie
will come along and tell you if you can do anything to migrate them.
And welcome to the Mac!

Daiya

 

[little_creature]

Hello Daiya,
A long time ago I did. If Word refuses to use the PC tmplate- open the
template from To Mac: ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Normal by double
clicking on it and without changing anything go to SAVE AS> Template into
the same folder. Quite Word and when you start word again my template was
used automaticaly.


I'm sorry about the *.dot. Of course, dot is not in Mac word. All the time
just to keep my document sync I have to overwrite the Backup of BLABLA .doc
to Zaloha dokumentu BLABLA.wbk. I'm bit mad about the extensions.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Daiya:

Yes, I have tried it. Mac Word 2004 is quite comfortable with a Word 2003
Normal provided you remove the extension from the file name. Use File>Open
from within Word to open the file when you get it to your Mac, add and
remove a space character, then save the Normal file (to write the Mac file
type and creator code into it). Word will then just use it.

If you have macros in it, you may get a compile error on some of them, but
that's not a big issue. Delete the macros/or statements in error.

The formatted AutoCorrects and the AutoText entries will be no problem.
They will just work.

The Unformatted autocorrect entries *are* a problem: Office 2004 uses a
common Microsoft Office ACL [English] file in
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft...

The content of that file is not entirely plain text. So I do not believe
that you can bring your PC ACL list across. It would do no harm to try

Re-name the default Microsoft Office ACL [English] file, copy the PC one in
its place, and rename it to exactly "Microsoft Office ACL [English]"
preserving the capitalisation and with no extension.

The worst that will happen is that the Autocorrect function will be disabled
or Word will crash when you try to open it. If that happens, delete the
file you bought across and re-name the old one back

Hope this helps

Little_Creature, have you tried this? I'm superstitious about trying to
force a Normal created by WinWord into MacWord. There are minor
differences, for instance, WinWord uses Normal.dot and MacWord refuses
to use the extension for Normal. What about putting it into Word's
startup folder to be a global template?

Partha--Normal.dot holds the default settings for new documents, which
are easy enough to reset. It also holds macros and keyboard shortcuts
you may have created. If some of the AutoCorrects you created were
*formatted*, then those are stored in Normal.dot. Otherwise, the
AutoCorrects are in a separate file altogether and hopefully John McGhie
will come along and tell you if you can do anything to migrate them.
And welcome to the Mac!

Daiya

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[anantham]

Thanks a lot for all your responses. Unfortunately they did not work
for me. The autocorrect list does not work on the Mac when i
transferred the ACL file from PC to Mac. And i did not see any
difference with any of my auto correct entries when i transferred the
Normal file. So i just reverted back to the original. It is so strange
that moving from a Microsoft product to another Microsoft product is
so hard! I wish someone comes up with a credible replacement for
Microsoft office in the Mac platform. I can then completely leave
Microsoft and it's mysterious design practices behind.
Thanks again for all your time, I really appreciate it.
A frustrated user.

Hi Daiya:

Yes, I have tried it. Mac Word 2004 is quite comfortable with a Word 2003
Normal provided you remove the extension from the file name. Use File>Open
from within Word to open the file when you get it to your Mac, add and
remove a space character, then save the Normal file (to write the Mac file
type and creator code into it). Word will then just use it.

If you have macros in it, you may get a compile error on some of them, but
that's not a big issue. Delete the macros/or statements in error.

The formatted AutoCorrects and the AutoText entries will be no problem.
They will just work.

The Unformatted autocorrect entries *are* a problem: Office 2004 uses a
common Microsoft Office ACL [English] file in
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft...

The content of that file is not entirely plain text. So I do not believe
that you can bring your PC ACL list across. It would do no harm to try

Re-name the default Microsoft Office ACL [English] file, copy the PC one in
its place, and rename it to exactly "Microsoft Office ACL [English]"
preserving the capitalisation and with no extension.

The worst that will happen is that the Autocorrect function will be disabled
or Word will crash when you try to open it. If that happens, delete the
file you bought across and re-name the old one back

Hope this helps

Little_Creature, have you tried this? I'm superstitious about trying to
force a Normal created by WinWord into MacWord. There are minor
differences, for instance, WinWord uses Normal.dot and MacWord refuses
to use the extension for Normal. What about putting it into Word's
startup folder to be a global template?

Partha--Normal.dot holds the default settings for new documents, which
are easy enough to reset. It also holds macros and keyboard shortcuts
you may have created. If some of the AutoCorrects you created were
*formatted*, then those are stored in Normal.dot. Otherwise, the
AutoCorrects are in a separate file altogether and hopefully John McGhie
will come along and tell you if you can do anything to migrate them.
And welcome to the Mac!

Daiya

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Ping us again when you get Word 2008 on the Mac. We will then be able to
make you a utility to cross stuff from one to the other, but we don't have
that ability yet.

Cheers

Thanks a lot for all your responses. Unfortunately they did not work
for me. The autocorrect list does not work on the Mac when i
transferred the ACL file from PC to Mac. And i did not see any
difference with any of my auto correct entries when i transferred the
Normal file. So i just reverted back to the original. It is so strange
that moving from a Microsoft product to another Microsoft product is
so hard! I wish someone comes up with a credible replacement for
Microsoft office in the Mac platform. I can then completely leave
Microsoft and it's mysterious design practices behind.
Thanks again for all your time, I really appreciate it.
A frustrated user.

Hi Daiya:

Yes, I have tried it. Mac Word 2004 is quite comfortable with a Word 2003
Normal provided you remove the extension from the file name. Use File>Open
from within Word to open the file when you get it to your Mac, add and
remove a space character, then save the Normal file (to write the Mac file
type and creator code into it). Word will then just use it.

If you have macros in it, you may get a compile error on some of them, but
that's not a big issue. Delete the macros/or statements in error.

The formatted AutoCorrects and the AutoText entries will be no problem.
They will just work.

The Unformatted autocorrect entries *are* a problem: Office 2004 uses a
common Microsoft Office ACL [English] file in
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft...

The content of that file is not entirely plain text. So I do not believe
that you can bring your PC ACL list across. It would do no harm to try

Re-name the default Microsoft Office ACL [English] file, copy the PC one in
its place, and rename it to exactly "Microsoft Office ACL [English]"
preserving the capitalisation and with no extension.

The worst that will happen is that the Autocorrect function will be disabled
or Word will crash when you try to open it. If that happens, delete the
file you bought across and re-name the old one back

Hope this helps

little_creature wrote:
To maintain your setting from Normal.doc you can just copy this file form
PC
from PC: Documents and settings>Application Data>Microsoft>Templates
To Mac: ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Normal

Little_Creature, have you tried this? I'm superstitious about trying to
force a Normal created by WinWord into MacWord. There are minor
differences, for instance, WinWord uses Normal.dot and MacWord refuses
to use the extension for Normal. What about putting it into Word's
startup folder to be a global template?

Partha--Normal.dot holds the default settings for new documents, which
are easy enough to reset. It also holds macros and keyboard shortcuts
you may have created. If some of the AutoCorrects you created were
*formatted*, then those are stored in Normal.dot. Otherwise, the
AutoCorrects are in a separate file altogether and hopefully John McGhie
will come along and tell you if you can do anything to migrate them.
And welcome to the Mac!

Daiya

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410