No one writes in German with WORD 2003 ???

[ritter197]

I am using the official MS MUI (multi languages) and want to use for
proofing English and German.

I have followed earlier links to the problem before, but nothing I do keeps
the language bar after selection.

I am using Windows XP Pro, WORD 2003 and the MUI by Microsoft.

When I highlight the text in German , then go to Tools and Language
selection and select German, then go back to Tools and Select Spelling the
dropdown window almost always stays in English. When I select within this
dropdown window German, it in most cases goes immediately back to English
or --- sometimes, says it cannot find German (since 2 days also says it
cannot find Italian). It "sometimes" after this,then goes and checks the
German and suggest Umlaute (for ae, oe,ue etc)

That is seldom though. But even here, it suggest often fuer (with German
Umlaut) as a capital Fuer, which is of course wrong.

This things annoy me more than anything else, take a lot of extra time, and
often I have to let the things go the way they are, without corrections.

There must be plenty of users who also write in German and I would like
their feedback and suggestions.

 

[Thomas Lindberg]

I guess most of us non-US using Word in other languages have given up trying
to find reasons why things do not work in other languages than English.

Word is written/maintained/deproved by (mainly) Americans and I guess you
know how multi-language they are.
Do not expect better software than that.

I have basically the same type of problems (possibly somewhat less) when
writing in Swedish in my US-En Word 2003 as I have ALL settings acc. to US
standard except the keyboard that is Swedish. I think this is the better
approach.

Thomas

Thomas

 

[ritter197]

Thomas, I do appreciate your reply but I think it is outrageous that
Microsoft asks from us over $ 100 to do just that - spell-check in one of
the many languages which they say their Multi Use Language pack supplies.

It is a true rip-off, in my opinion.

 

[anon k]

We multilinguals in America have the same problem. Microsoft doesn't
seem to care.

The whole multi-language system in Word is frustrating enough that it is
easiest to simply turn it off, and rely on your own knowledge to check
spelling and grammar.

 

[ritter197]

Well, I know most of the time the correct words and spelling in German, BUT
the Umlaute I love to have corrected and that is why I have and use the MS
MUI.

Strangely, I installed it and it went (months ago) just normally, but when I
want to check, Go to Tools, then set Language to German, then back to Tools
to Check Spelling, in most cases the drop=-down window goes back to default
English or comes up that it cannot find the German dictionary.

After I say OK it the (many times, not always) goes and checks it in German.

It is MOST frustrating indeed.

 

[anon k]

I have a lot of trouble with Word guessing the language for me, it
repeatedly guesses wrong and it isn't easy to see which parts it has
tagged in which wrong language. So my English is often tagged as French
or German or Italian, and vice versa in all combinations. The promise
of artificial intelligence is a very cruel strain of humor.

 

[ritter197]

I just wish someone at MS would READ these complaints, but they are
apparently too busy to carry their Billions of dollars to the bank.
The MVS Volunteers are also helpless. They read sometimes, but have
apparently NO influence on MS at all.

It is too sad we have to spend all our money on terrible software what
languages is concerned.

 

[lillianebutler]

Oddly enough, mine seems to have no problem "guessing" the language. (I
work in DP and work with German, French, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese
documents.) Do you have the AutoDetect for languages on?
My problem is that for some reason only the German version of a license
document that has been created in several languages will not reflow
when made into an RTF. Have you had this problem, or is it just me?

 

[ritter197]

I do not have the Auto-detect on. I have tried it on and off, it makes no
difference.

I must admit that I do not know the term RTF, sorry for the ignorance,
please explain.

Which version or year is you MS Multilanguage edition?

 

[anon k]

Oddly enough, mine seems to have no problem "guessing" the language. (I
work in DP and work with German, French, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese
documents.) Do you have the AutoDetect for languages on?
My problem is that for some reason only the German version of a license
document that has been created in several languages will not reflow
when made into an RTF. Have you had this problem, or is it just me?

How does yours do when you switch languages mid-sentence or, more
conservatively, between sentences? I find that one word with a
diacritic throws the detection system haywire, even if it's an English
diacritic as in rôle or naïve or old-fashioned coöperate. Mine knows
how to switch to other languages, but not back to English again.

 

[ritter197]

I just tried this and it switched (strangely enough for me) from German and
then the next sentence back to English. I am astounded.

 

[anon k]

Wouldn't it be good if we could tune the language detection algorithms
outselves?

 

[lillianebutler]

RTF= Rich Text Format. It is a way of saving text documents so that
they appear the same no matter the platform. It is an option when you
save a document.
I am on Windows XP Pro, using Microsoft Word 2002 SP3.

I admit that on some other documents, especially ones where I have
pasted text from another application (such as FrameMaker), I do get
accented letters listed as Chinese. I solve that by deleting those
characters and re-typing them.

Lillian

 

[ritter197]

Lillian:

Thanks for the feedback. I just never heard the abbreviation but I do know
what it is now and I understand what Rich Text Format is.

I also use Windows XP Pro and Microsoft Word 2003 and I just fail to
understand, why 2 people who have the same OS, same application, same MUI
pack, have different experiences.