Proofing tools office 2004 and upcoming office 2008 for mac

[hochmuth.daniel]

Hi,
I'm from Germany and right now I'm in the U.S. for a couple of
months.
I plan to purchase the Office 2004 for mac as well as the Office 2008
version which will be launched in Jan 08.
My question for you is if it is possible to add the German spell and
grammar check. I know that this is not basically part of office 2004.
But is it possible to download a tool which include the German spell
check? If yes, how much is it and will it also work with the upcoming
Office 2008 for mac?
Thanks for your help.
Best regards, Daniel

 

[Michel Bintener]

Hi Daniel,

you will be pleased to hear that Office 2004 already comes with German
spelling & grammar check. I'm not sure why you can't get it to work; are you
sure that your text is marked as German (either through a style or via
Tools>Languages)? Also, depending on which Mac you are using, the additional
languages may not have been installed; in that case, just use the installer
disk and do a custom install, which will allow you to install a couple of
languages without re-installing Office itself. It is advisable to then
reapply the latest updates (11.3.5, 11.3.6 and 11.3.7, as some of these
updates may have modified one or two Office language files). Also, you
should find it interested that if you buy Office 2004 now, you are entitled
to get a free* upgrade to Office 2008 once it is released. Make sure you
keep the receipt when you buy your copy!

* there's a small fee for shipping & handling, which is around $10, if I
remember correctly.

Hi,
I'm from Germany and right now I'm in the U.S. for a couple of
months.
I plan to purchase the Office 2004 for mac as well as the Office 2008
version which will be launched in Jan 08.
My question for you is if it is possible to add the German spell and
grammar check. I know that this is not basically part of office 2004.
But is it possible to download a tool which include the German spell
check? If yes, how much is it and will it also work with the upcoming
Office 2008 for mac?
Thanks for your help.
Best regards, Daniel

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

*** Please always reply to the newsgroup. ***

 

[hochmuth.daniel]

Hi Daniel,

you will be pleased to hear that Office 2004 already comes with German
spelling & grammar check. I'm not sure why you can't get it to work; are you
sure that your text is marked as German (either through a style or via
Tools>Languages)? Also, depending on which Mac you are using, the additional
languages may not have been installed; in that case, just use the installer
disk and do a custom install, which will allow you to install a couple of
languages without re-installing Office itself. It is advisable to then
reapply the latest updates (11.3.5, 11.3.6 and 11.3.7, as some of these
updates may have modified one or two Office language files). Also, you
should find it interested that if you buy Office 2004 now, you are entitled
to get a free* upgrade to Office 2008 once it is released. Make sure you
keep the receipt when you buy your copy!

* there's a small fee for shipping & handling, which is around $10, if I
remember correctly.



--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

*** Please always reply to the newsgroup. ***

Thank you very much for your quick response.
I guess I will purchase the Office 2004 version for mac soon. If there
is already a German spell and grammar check included, I will be
totally happy...
I'm just using a mac since half a year and I decided waiting for the
Office mac 2008 version. Because of the promotion to get the 2008
version for free (10$), I will act soon.
Because I'm a student i can save further money with purchasing the
student version. Does anybody know if I also get 3 licenses with the
student version? i just know that this is the case when purchasing the
student version for Windows!
Thanks.

 

[Clive Huggan]

Thank you very much for your quick response.
I guess I will purchase the Office 2004 version for mac soon. If there
is already a German spell and grammar check included, I will be
totally happy...
I'm just using a mac since half a year and I decided waiting for the
Office mac 2008 version. Because of the promotion to get the 2008
version for free (10$), I will act soon.
Because I'm a student i can save further money with purchasing the
student version. Does anybody know if I also get 3 licenses with the
student version? i just know that this is the case when purchasing the
student version for Windows!
Thanks.

Yes, Daniel -- same as for Windows versions.

Clive Huggan
=============

 

[Michel Bintener]

Because I'm a student i can save further money with purchasing the
student version. Does anybody know if I also get 3 licenses with the
student version? i just know that this is the case when purchasing the
student version for Windows!

Hi Daniel,

that's right, the Student and Teacher version of Office 2004 includes
*three* licenses.

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

*** Please always reply to the newsgroup. ***

 

[hochmuth.daniel]

Hi Daniel,

that's right, the Student and Teacher version of Office 2004 includes
*three* licenses.

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

*** Please always reply to the newsgroup. ***

Thank you!

Have a great day!

Daniel

 

[Irene D]

How do I get the upgrade. I purchased the 2004 around Oct. and I really want the upgrade allthough I cant find my receipt. I payed with my credit card so I do have a record of purchase. What do I need to do to get upgrade.
Thanks.

 

[William Smith]

How do I get the upgrade. I purchased the 2004 around Oct. and I really
want the upgrade allthough I cant find my receipt. I payed with my
credit card so I do have a record of purchase. What do I need to do to
get upgrade.

Hi Irene!

You're eligible for the Technology Guarantee, which allows you to
receive a free upgrade (you're responsible for shipping costs) to the
similar version of Office 2008.

Have a look at this page on Microsoft's website
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/go/promotions/default.mspx>.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>

 

[Pawel]

Going back to the original question. Is there any way to adapt spellcheck dictionaries from other Office versions (Office 2004 or Windows Office 2007) for O2008? Or to create one using an aspell/ispell dictionary as a source? There is no dictionary for my language (Polish) in MSO 2008, and as far as I know none is planned.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Don't think so, sorry. I think you have to open a doc in TextEdit (or
some other processor) to use the aspell functions. Use Send | Feedback
in Word to request Polish support (and try to get others in the same
situation to do so as well).

By the way--it's actually better to post a new thread than add onto an
old one.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Oops, I might have lied. A suggestion offered before by someone else--if
you can get the spelling dictionaries from aspell or somewhere, try
opening them, copying the words into a custom dictionary in Word, and
telling Word to use that custom dictionary.

I've not tried this myself, but Word's Help on custom dictionary should
be clear. You probably then want to set a language for the dictionary,
and tag your text with the same language--MacWord will let you tag text
with languages (via Tools | Language) even though it doesn't support them.

 

[John McGhie]

As Daiya says, there is no way to "convert" a custom dictionary from another
version of Office. The Spelling checker Main Dictionaries are compiled
Windows 32-bit binary applications: they won't convert to the Mac. Sorry.

You can use any TEXT source to create Custom Dictionaries. Be careful of
Unicode: Unicode characters cause problems in the custom dictionaries of
some versions of Word. If you get this, Word crashes on startup.

There is theoretically no limit to the number of words a custom dictionary
can contain, but the limit for Mac Word has not been published to my
knowledge. I would avoid getting a custom dictionary larger than 10,000
words

Follow the procedures in the Office 2008 Help carefully when creating a
custom dictionary. The procedure has changed slightly.

Hope this helps

Going back to the original question. Is there any way to adapt spellcheck
dictionaries from other Office versions (Office 2004 or Windows Office 2007)
for O2008? Or to create one using an aspell/ispell dictionary as a source?
There is no dictionary for my language (Polish) in MSO 2008, and as far as I
know none is planned.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Pawel]

Thank you for the suggestions. The aspell-pl word list has about 25 000 words BEFORE expansion of the affixes (our language uses flexion a lot) and is ~3.5MB uncompressed. Expanding all the possible suffixes (required to make the dictionary usable) woud give more than 100 000 words. I think it's better to ask Microsoft and the local distributors for this feature.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Did we already mention use Help | Send Feedback in Word to make sure
your request for Polish is counted? Try to convince MS that adding
Polish support would be profitable in some way, if you can.

 

[MARCIN]

IF I'M USING DIFFERENT LANGUAGE THAN Office 2008 HAS IN 'PROOFING' PACKAGE - THAN WHAT ????

I NEED POLISH LANGUAGE/GRAMMAR/SPELLING CHECK, AND THERE IS NO INFORMATION (ON BOX, IN WEB, ETC.) THIS LANGUAGE IS NOT SUPPORT. NO INFORMATION ABOUT ANY ALTERNATIVE OR FUTURE SOLUTION (EG HOW TO ADD DIFFERENT DICTIONARY THAN OFFERED IN BASIC PACKAGE).

MS - AS USUAL - GIVE US NO INFORMATION OR SUPPORT.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I NEED POLISH LANGUAGE/GRAMMAR/SPELLING CHECK,

MICROSFT DOESN'T CURRENTLY PROVIDE IT AND THERE IS NO PROOFING TOOL YOU
CAN BUY TO BRING SUPPORT FOR IT.

You might want to take a look into thrid party solutions though,

Corentin