REPOST: Office X 10.1.5 No Spelling Functionality

[Fred Leason]

Reference: Recent posts by John McGhie, John Georgiadis, Dayo Mitchell,
Marc Blum, Bob Jones, and Corentin Cras-Meneur with the word "Spell" in
Subject. Also Previous responses to origional post. This is REPOSTED
without origional attachement and with some clarifications.

I have followed all advice in previous posts. I have coordinated
document, style, OS, and Dictionary specifications to English US.

I have checked document for Language=no proof.

Feel free to ask me to double check anything.

The reason I think something is wrong is I transferred my document from
my mac to my PC. When I opened the same document in Word for Windows
Spelling identified all my problems. I transferred the document back to
mac, and introduced spelling errors. Still no corrections. So I don't
think there is a problem with the document.

And it is not just this document. Spelling is not working in any
document even if it was created a long time ago.

And Grammar works fine. Only a problem with Spelling.

Here are some events which may have caused the problem:

I have installed LaTeX software on my mac to do equation editing. I
installed ASpell and cocoAspell Version 1.4.1. When I saw that I was
having problems with spelling in Word, I uninstalled cocoAspell.
Problems with Spell in Word persist, but who knows what ASpell did to my
system.

When I saw the spelling problem I was fooling around with Preferences -
Spelling and Grammar - Custom Dictionary - Dictionary. Here is a Grab
image of my dictionary settings:
http://www.geocities.com/mr_leason_sem/Dictionary.tiff
Language is "None" for Custom Dictionary as shown. The Language is
"English (US)" for all the other dictionaries.

I also changed the permissions on all the Dictionary files in
/Microsoft Office X/Shared Applications/Proofing Tools
You can see that making adjustments to and using dictionaries in the
previous paragraph changed the permissions back to default for the
dictionaries in the .tiff file.

[Freds-iMac:/Microsoft Office X/Shared Applications/Proofing Tools]
fredleas# ls -l
total 211960
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 6148 22 Oct 2002 .DS_Store
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 163841 19 Oct 2001 Aus English Hyph
Dictionary
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 535331 19 Oct 2001 Australian Spelling
Dictionary
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 125756 19 Oct 2001 Bokmal Spelling
.. . .
-rw-r--r-- 1 fredleas admin 444037 10 Apr 08:40 English (US) Word Forms
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 1297640 22 Oct 2002 English Grammar
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 3993941 19 Oct 2001 English Grammar
Dictionary
-rw-r--r-- 1 fredleas admin 48698 10 Apr 08:40 English Hyphenation
-rw-r--r-- 1 fredleas admin 83170 10 Apr 08:40 English Spelling
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 24643 15 Oct 2002 English Thesaurus
.. . .
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 163841 19 Oct 2001 US English Hyph
Dictionary
-rw-r--r-- 1 fredleas admin 363093 10 Apr 08:40 US English Spelling
Dictionary
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 1350186 19 Oct 2001 US English Thesaurus
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 83170 9 Apr 18:45 Word Work File I_1

Why did I do this? Because when I first started trying to add
dictionaries I was adding them as Custom and was getting permission
errors when I first started using Word Spelling and Grammar tools. This
is not a problem now.

I also tried looking at these files as well as re-installed versions of
the dictionary files. They are compressed or encrypted because except
for copywrite information at the beginning of each file, they have
gobbledygook in them.

Also, I have been up to date with OSX updates. I am currently running
Mac OS X 10.3.3 (7F44) Darwin 7.03. My office build is Version 10.1.5
(030814)

All I want to do is get spell check back. What could have I done? Can
you help me?

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

Hi Fred:

Hmmm.... OK, this is a hard one. I am not sure I would publish quite so
much of the output of the ls command on the public internet -- unless you
have a particularly impregnable firewall

The permissions for those files should be the same as they are for the
Australian English spelling dictionary -rwxrwxrwx

However, English US must be visible to Word otherwise it would not allow you
to select the language. Let's go to Word>Preferences>Spelling and Grammar.
Make sure that Check spelling as you type is ON and Hide spelling errors in
this document is OFF. Suggest from main dictionary only should be OFF, and
all the other spelling options should be ON.

Now OK that and examine the status bar at the bottom of the Word window.
The letters REC should be visible, and immediately to their left there
should be a book icon. If the icon has a red cross, there are spelling
errors in the document, if it hasn't, there are not.

Select all of the text in the document and set the language to "something
else (Say, English AUS). Watch the icon at the bottom of the screen. The
pencil should animate while Word checks the document. Eventually, the red
cross should appear to show there are some spelling errors in the document.

Try this: Select some text and mark it as Australian English. Now type
initialize and rationalise. Initialize should be marked as a misspelling and
rationalise should not, if you really are in Australian English.

If neither of the above happened, then you are quite right, the spelling
module really is not running.

1) Quit all except the Finder

2) Start Apple's Disk Utility and choose Repair Permissions.

3) When that completes, re-start OS X and try again. Set your document
back to American. That may have fixed it.

4) If not, you need to find and run the Remove Office utility from your
Office CD. Don't delete anything before you do, or the Utility will fail.

5) Now re-install Office using the Installer utility.

6) Now run Disk Utility again and Repair Permissions

7) Now install each of the Office Updates, in the order specified on the
Microsoft web page.

8) Run Disk Utility and repair permissions a final time, then reboot again.

OK, it's messy and laborious, but it fixes just about everything

Cheers

Reference: Recent posts by John McGhie, John Georgiadis, Dayo Mitchell,
Marc Blum, Bob Jones, and Corentin Cras-Meneur with the word "Spell" in
Subject. Also Previous responses to origional post. This is REPOSTED
without origional attachement and with some clarifications.

I have followed all advice in previous posts. I have coordinated
document, style, OS, and Dictionary specifications to English US.

I have checked document for Language=no proof.

Feel free to ask me to double check anything.

The reason I think something is wrong is I transferred my document from
my mac to my PC. When I opened the same document in Word for Windows
Spelling identified all my problems. I transferred the document back to
mac, and introduced spelling errors. Still no corrections. So I don't
think there is a problem with the document.

And it is not just this document. Spelling is not working in any
document even if it was created a long time ago.

And Grammar works fine. Only a problem with Spelling.

Here are some events which may have caused the problem:

I have installed LaTeX software on my mac to do equation editing. I
installed ASpell and cocoAspell Version 1.4.1. When I saw that I was
having problems with spelling in Word, I uninstalled cocoAspell.
Problems with Spell in Word persist, but who knows what ASpell did to my
system.

When I saw the spelling problem I was fooling around with Preferences -
Spelling and Grammar - Custom Dictionary - Dictionary. Here is a Grab
image of my dictionary settings:
http://www.geocities.com/mr_leason_sem/Dictionary.tiff
Language is "None" for Custom Dictionary as shown. The Language is
"English (US)" for all the other dictionaries.

I also changed the permissions on all the Dictionary files in
/Microsoft Office X/Shared Applications/Proofing Tools
You can see that making adjustments to and using dictionaries in the
previous paragraph changed the permissions back to default for the
dictionaries in the .tiff file.

[Freds-iMac:/Microsoft Office X/Shared Applications/Proofing Tools]
fredleas# ls -l
total 211960
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 6148 22 Oct 2002 .DS_Store
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 163841 19 Oct 2001 Aus English Hyph
Dictionary
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 535331 19 Oct 2001 Australian Spelling
Dictionary
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 125756 19 Oct 2001 Bokmal Spelling
. . .

-rw-r--r-- 1 fredleas admin 444037 10 Apr 08:40 English (US) Word Forms
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 1297640 22 Oct 2002 English Grammar
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 3993941 19 Oct 2001 English Grammar
Dictionary
-rw-r--r-- 1 fredleas admin 48698 10 Apr 08:40 English Hyphenation
-rw-r--r-- 1 fredleas admin 83170 10 Apr 08:40 English Spelling
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 24643 15 Oct 2002 English Thesaurus
. . .

-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 163841 19 Oct 2001 US English Hyph
Dictionary
-rw-r--r-- 1 fredleas admin 363093 10 Apr 08:40 US English Spelling
Dictionary
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 1350186 19 Oct 2001 US English Thesaurus
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fredleas admin 83170 9 Apr 18:45 Word Work File I_1

Why did I do this? Because when I first started trying to add
dictionaries I was adding them as Custom and was getting permission
errors when I first started using Word Spelling and Grammar tools. This
is not a problem now.

I also tried looking at these files as well as re-installed versions of
the dictionary files. They are compressed or encrypted because except
for copywrite information at the beginning of each file, they have
gobbledygook in them.

Also, I have been up to date with OSX updates. I am currently running
Mac OS X 10.3.3 (7F44) Darwin 7.03. My office build is Version 10.1.5
(030814)

All I want to do is get spell check back. What could have I done? Can
you help me?

--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Fred Leason]

Here is a step by step response. Thanks for your thoroughness.

Hi Fred:

Hmmm.... OK, this is a hard one. I am not sure I would publish quite so
much of the output of the ls command on the public internet -- unless you
have a particularly impregnable firewall
Oops.

The permissions for those files should be the same as they are for the
Australian English spelling dictionary -rwxrwxrwx
Done.

However, English US must be visible to Word otherwise it would not allow you
to select the language. Let's go to Word>Preferences>Spelling and Grammar.
Make sure that Check spelling as you type is ON and Hide spelling errors in
this document is OFF. Suggest from main dictionary only should be OFF, and
all the other spelling options should be ON.

I did have Suggest from main dictionary on, but changing it to off
didn't help yet. I did leave Use German . . . off.

Now OK that and examine the status bar at the bottom of the Word window.
The letters REC should be visible, and immediately to their left there
should be a book icon. If the icon has a red cross, there are spelling
errors in the document, if it hasn't, there are not.

As it turns out, I do get the red cross. However when I click the
dictionary icon, the corrections only come up on grammar problems, not
on the spelling problems I introduced. Once I say "ignore" to grammar
problems, I get Spelling and Grammar Check is complete message and the
red cross goes away.

Select all of the text in the document and set the language to "something
else (Say, English AUS). Watch the icon at the bottom of the screen. The
pencil should animate while Word checks the document. Eventually, the red
cross should appear to show there are some spelling errors in the document.

Try this: Select some text and mark it as Australian English. Now type
initialize and rationalise. Initialize should be marked as a misspelling and
rationalise should not, if you really are in Australian English.

Changed entire text to Australian English. introduced your words.
After Spelling and grammar got through the grammar problems, I got a
"done" message. Nothing done to introduced or explicitly wrong spellings.

If neither of the above happened, then you are quite right, the spelling
module really is not running.

1) Quit all except the Finder

2) Start Apple's Disk Utility and choose Repair Permissions.

3) When that completes, re-start OS X and try again. Set your document
back to American. That may have fixed it.

Nope.

I have not done any of the rest yet. Please look at my answers above.
I'd rather wait before I get out the BFH.

 

[Fred Leason]

Hi Fred:
Snip

back to American. That may have fixed it.

4) If not, you need to find and run the Remove Office utility from your
Office CD. Don't delete anything before you do, or the Utility will fail.

My Office X CD does not come up with a remove office program. I have
"Microsoft Office Installer created 19 October 2001 3:00AM, Modified 26
September 2002 7:35PM."

I get 4 icons: Welcome (info,) MS Office X (Drag to HD to install,) MS
Office Installer (Choose which componenets,) and a Value Pack Folder.

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

Hi Fred,

The remover is in the Value Pack folder. Silly placement.

Since no one ever wants to reinstall (am currently putting it off myself),
check here to make sure you've done everything short of that:
http://www.mcgimpsey.com/macoffice/word/troubleshooting.html

Also look in the Word Startup folder (Apps: Office: Office: Startup) and see
if you have any add-ins.

Did you check the cocoAspell installer log to make sure all the files it
installed are gone?

DM

 

[Fred Leason]

I found the Remove utility. I did as you suggested. Everything worked.
Spelling works.

I can only assume there was a misconnection between the origional Office
install and all the Mac OS and Office Updates.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Fred Leason]

Thanks, I did already find it in the Value Pack folder. Everything
worked if you re-install everything. It wasn't that bad since I kept
copies of all the upgrades. It is not like in windows when you need to
re-boot between each update.

If I had a cocoAspell installer log, it got deleted when I cleaned
things out. I followed instructions in the cocoAspell download for
uninstalling the previous version.

I don't know what happened. But the BFH worked. Now I need to get
caught up. Thanks.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

Hi Fred:

It's more likely that one or more of the tweaks you did changed the file
permissions on one of the 4,000 Office files involved.

We can't tell which one. The Spelling engine was running, but it was unable
to display its result in Word. Since spelling was apparently operating in
Excel and Entourage, it was one of the Word files that got hammered.

The only way to put this right in less than a week is the BFH cure.

Cheers

I found the Remove utility. I did as you suggested. Everything worked.
Spelling works.

I can only assume there was a misconnection between the origional Office
install and all the Mac OS and Office Updates.

Thanks for your help.

--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]