Office 2008 Spellchecker

[Tim Streater]

I'm writing a small document in Word 2008 on an Intel Mini, running
10.6.3. If I spellcheck it, I find I can't add new words - the Add
button is greyed out in the SpellCheck panel.

Any suggestions as to why this might be?

Thanks,

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I'm writing a small document in Word 2008 on an Intel Mini, running
10.6.3. If I spellcheck it, I find I can't add new words - the Add
button is greyed out in the SpellCheck panel.

Any suggestions as to why this might be?

Corrupted custom dictionary.
Go to the preferences, and in the spelling preferences, select your
custom dictionary and click on the button to open it in Word.
Make a small modification (eg: add a space and remove it), then save.
Hopefully it'll save back a clean copy of the dictionary.

Corentin

 

[John McGhie]

Yeah, that's usually a corrupt custom dictionary. Spelling words can be
added only to the custom dictionary, not the main dictionary.

1) Open the custom dictionary by choosing Word>Preferences>Spelling and
Grammar>Custom Dictionaries>Edit...

You must open it exactly that way or this won't work...

2) Add and remove a space from the custom dictionary (we need to force the
file to save by marking it as "changed")

3) SAVE the custom dictionary and OK your way out.

4) Turn your spelling back on (it was automatically disabled when you
edited the dictionary).

The issue seems to be that the custom dictionary is picking up some
formatting that it should not contain, and Word has no way to suppress it.
Even though the custom dictionary is a plain text file, Word saves it as a
document to ensure that it can contain Unicode characters.

The other thing it could be is that you have set the language in the text to
a language Word does not have: use Tools>Language to ensure the highlighted
language is one you have.

Cheers

I'm writing a small document in Word 2008 on an Intel Mini, running
10.6.3. If I spellcheck it, I find I can't add new words - the Add
button is greyed out in the SpellCheck panel.

Any suggestions as to why this might be?

Thanks,

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matters unless you intend to pay!

 

[Tim Streater]

Yeah, that's usually a corrupt custom dictionary. Spelling words can be
added only to the custom dictionary, not the main dictionary.

1) Open the custom dictionary by choosing Word>Preferences>Spelling and
Grammar>Custom Dictionaries>Edit...

You must open it exactly that way or this won't work...

2) Add and remove a space from the custom dictionary (we need to force the
file to save by marking it as "changed")

3) SAVE the custom dictionary and OK your way out.

4) Turn your spelling back on (it was automatically disabled when you
edited the dictionary).

The issue seems to be that the custom dictionary is picking up some
formatting that it should not contain, and Word has no way to suppress it.
Even though the custom dictionary is a plain text file, Word saves it as a
document to ensure that it can contain Unicode characters.

The other thing it could be is that you have set the language in the text to
a language Word does not have: use Tools>Language to ensure the highlighted
language is one you have.

Thanks - that fixed it. In fact "Custom Dictionary" was greyed out too,
so I clicked on "Dictionaries" to find that "Custom Dictionary" was
unticked and had language "English (Aus)". Dunno where that came from.
Anyway I edited it and resaved and Bob's yer uncle.

Cheers,