Spell check problems (follow up)

[dsrtplace15]

My problem is compounded by the fact that this system won't let me
reply to the good guy who's already worked to help me. You all do a
great service for mankind, and also woman kind I'm sure. And following
up here I hope I'm not too wordy. Possibly now all anyone will have to
do to answer my question is skip to the third to the last paragraph
below and will understand what's needed.

I call my important unavailable 1200 word custom spell checker "Best
cust dic" which I thought I'd lost but which seems again available. My
iMac, (flat panel, G4, with classic and OSX 10.2.8, and Word 2001)
suddenly refused to let me pull down any of the top-side menus. A MS
tech helped me with that but left me with no custom spell checker.

Following the suggestions of one good guy here I went first after
"language." I tried entering both "None" (probably the same as "No
Language") and English (US) and got: "Word could not save the language
setting in the custom dictionary." I had a document up on my desktop
on which to work. I went after Language under Help and found nothing
relevant, or about language at all. (I incidentally word-process in
English (US) exclusively tho occasionally I use a, say, French or
maybe German word. I've never had a problem doing this.)

I clicked TextEdit in my hard drive and I got only a blank panel
headed: Untitled 2," below which there are opportunities to enter text
justified to the left, etc., and opportunity to change the 0 pt, other
options (including a couple with pad locks), and below a ruler, than
an opportunity to type in text. There is no LCID 3081 or otherwise
anything else there.

Screwing around before I originally sent out a request for help, I
several times noted that my primary," Best cust dic" spell check list,
the only one I care about, was listed first, highlighted and checked
under "Custom Dictionaries" and the system still didn't work with the
given document up to be worked on. But I've probed on.

I just now went thru Preferences > Dictionaries. . . and got the
panel: "Custom Dictionaries" with a box including "Custom
Dictionary" [apparently the default] and below an option to click
"Add. . ." [I'm now following my scribbled notes made as I worked my
way thru the Dictionary system, and believe it has changed since I was
at some point able to again add my "Best cust dic."] I click and got
a panel "Add Dictionaries" with first a sub-menu labeled "Desktop." I
clicked the up/down arrow there and got a repeat "Desktop" just
shifted to the right a bit with a check mark to its left (and which
option would not remain available). But below that is a menu, or
scroll box, listing all the documents and folders on my desktop
(including "Best cust dic" which I thought I'd lost). It was
highlighted. [Later I tried "New. . ." on the "Add Dictionaries" menu,
which again included in a scroll box with all of my desktop files. I
did not pursue the "New" course. ("Best cust dc" was there but dimmed
with most other files.)]

Below that another menu bar labeled SHOW: then [boxed] "Speller custom
dictionary." Clicking the up/down arrow there I get "All documents."
Two options. [At that point I followed thru trying both with
eventually the same old final negative result.] (To the left is "Hide
preview.") Then below the "SHOW, Speller custom dictionary" is some
text: "Choose custom dictionaries file to use." I click OPEN, lower
right.

I'm returned to "Custom Dictionaries" with "Best cust doc" now listed
first (with a check in its box). And with English (US) in place. I
clicked OK, got back to Preferences, where I clicked OK and got a
warning: "The custom dictionary "Mac HD:Users:bobtracy:desktop;'Best
cust dic' is not available." So I'm defeated again in loading my prime
custom spell checker. And, of course, my "Add" option. i.e., to add to
my custom dictionary, remains dimmed.

Another related issue for me involves an icon I found on my desktop
labeled "Best cust dic" but unlike the usual Word document icon with
upper right corner folded and the blue W down left. It's quite small
and I can barely make out a small multi-colored square in the upper
right, below that "ABC," and lower right a red check mark. In any even
it's available if all else fails toward recapturing my much needed
custom spell checker.

In any event I would much appreciate any thoughts any of you might
forward, and tremendously appreciate the suggestions, and time
represented, which has already been sent. Bob Tracy. (dsrtplace15 at
yahoo dot com)

 

[John McGhie [MVP Word, Word Mac]]

Hi Bob:

OK, give yourself a break We can tell that you are new to computers and
maybe new to Macs as well. That's not a serious sin: in fact, it's good
because you don't have to unlearn a whole lot of stuff. And you're doing a
lot of things right: even though you are using a system that is very
difficult to use.

For example, you have provided your real name. Many of us don't feel like
making that much of an effort when asked to address some weird screen-name
or no name at all. And you have provided lots and lots of detail. I get an
irrisitable urge to reply to "Does anyone know how to do bullets" with a
single word: "Yes"

Part of the reason this thing is so difficult to use is that it is designed
to "look like" email or "look like" a web page, because someone thought that
would be "easier". It's not either, and attempts to paint it a different
colour have just made it hard to use. This is UseNet, the very beginning of
the Internet. The Internet started here on UseNet before email was even
possible and YEARS before the world wide web was invented

Here, each message is "threaded" to others related to the same topic. One
important thing is never to change the Subject line of your follow-up posts,
because many newsreaders use the subject line to connect the posts in a
thread. Right now, I have no idea what you're talking about, because you
have added (follow up) to the subject line so my newsreader thinks it's a
different post. John and Corentin will be along in a minute to remind me
that's what you get if you use cheap and nasty newsreaders Please don't
change the Subject line again, or I may lose you forever!

Next time, try coming in using Entourage instead of Google Groups. You will
find it a lot easier to find your way around.

Now, let's turn to your problem. Please read all of this post before you
attempt to "do" anything.

It would appear that your core problem is that Word cannot write to your
custom dictionary. That may be because the file does not exist, because
Word doesn't know where it is, or because some other application opened it
first, preventing Word from obtaining an Edit Lock from the Operating
System.

The file you have named "Best cust dic" should be in
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/ folder on OS X (where ~ stands for your
Username Home folder). So copy it there now. Notice I am using forward
slashes for file path separators: that's the Unix way: Mac OS X will be
happy with either (but it doesn't like back-slashes...). Your custom
dictionary is currently at Mac HD:Users:bobtracy:desktop (it's on your
desktop). You cannot use it from there: Word won't let you.

Word 2001 was not built to run on Unix, and won't expect to find the custom
dictionary there, so the next thing we have to do is change
Word>Preferences>File Locations>Proofing Tools to point to that location.
Start Word, then go to Preferences>File Locations, highlight the "Proofing
Tools" entry and click Modify. If it is not pointing to
"~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/" change it to there.

Quit and restart Word at this point, to force it to save the change you just
made.

Now go through the process of adding your custom dictionary again. This
time, it should immediately find the custom dictionary and offer it (it
should appear with a checkmark, if it doesn't, check the checkbox. Set the
"Language" to "None". That makes the dictionary available to all languages.

Now, try to OK your way out. You may see the error message "Word could not
save the language setting in the custom dictionary" again. If you do,
believe it or not that's progress. Now we have elminated three potential
problems: we now know it exists, Word knows where it is, and it's not on the
desktop.

That leaves three posibilities: It's not a file, it's not a dictionary, or
it's locked read-only.

First, Quit Word and find the custom dictionary in the Finder. Select it
and choose Open. The icon you describe indicates that it may open in
TextEdit. If it tries to open in something else, start TextEdit and use
File>Open to open in TextEdit. You should see a single column of spelling
entries.

If all you get is a blank page, then chances are the item you have there is
a FOLDER. It may be the outer containing folder in which your dictionary
was stored on your old machine. You may have to find that folder, open it,
and copy the actual dictionary file out of it.

If the top line begins with "LCID nnnn" where "nnnn" is four digits, delete
it. If that line was present, and you tried to save a language other than
it indicated, you would get the error. That line sets the dictionary as
belonging to one specific language. Which prevents Word from writing to the
file if it is currently running in a different language. By removing that
line, you make the dictionary available to all languages, which is what you
need.

If you cannot "read" the content of the file (it's garbled...) then the
content of the file is not right. Chances are, someone has saved it as a
Word Document! That's a very easy mistake to make. To correct this, close
the file, start Word, use File>Open from the Word menu to open the file in
Word, then File>Save As to save it and change the Type setting to "Plain
Text Only". The dictionary won't work unless it's in ASCII text. Notice I
told you to use File>Open instead of trying to double-click the file.
That's because we want to force the file to open in Word this time: if you
double-click it, it may open in a different application that can't do what
we want.

Now try to SAVE the dictionary. If you get an error message at this point,
the file is read-only, or your user login does not have permission to write
to the folder where the dictionary is stored. Close the file, then use
GetInfo in Finder to set the file as NOT "Stationery" and NOT "Read Only".
If you can't do that, you do not have permission to write to your own user
preferences folder, and no wonder nothing is working In which case,
stop at this point and come back to us: we need to very carefully advise you
how to correct that, because we're getting into the high-risk area

Once you have proved that it is a file, it is a text file, you do have
permission to write to it, and it is in the correct place, then it should
simply be a matter of adding it again in Word. This time, do not specify a
language, just add it as a dictionary and check mark it.

Now: test it. It should work this time.

If it doesn't, come back here with an exact description of the error
messages you encounter. By specifying an exact sequence here, we can now
determine what problems remain. This procedure should work immediately and
easily. If it doesn't, please don;t try anything else without checking back
with us: we need to knwo exactly what state the computer is in before we
advise you further. If you try a few more things, we can;t know what is
what.

Hope this helps

--

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

http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/

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

My problem is compounded by the fact that this system won't let me
reply to the good guy who's already worked to help me. You all do a
great service for mankind, and also woman kind I'm sure. And following
up here I hope I'm not too wordy. Possibly now all anyone will have to
do to answer my question is skip to the third to the last paragraph
below and will understand what's needed.

I call my important unavailable 1200 word custom spell checker "Best
cust dic" which I thought I'd lost but which seems again available. My
iMac, (flat panel, G4, with classic and OSX 10.2.8, and Word 2001)
suddenly refused to let me pull down any of the top-side menus. A MS
tech helped me with that but left me with no custom spell checker.

Following the suggestions of one good guy here I went first after
"language." I tried entering both "None" (probably the same as "No
Language") and English (US) and got: "Word could not save the language
setting in the custom dictionary." I had a document up on my desktop
on which to work. I went after Language under Help and found nothing
relevant, or about language at all. (I incidentally word-process in
English (US) exclusively tho occasionally I use a, say, French or
maybe German word. I've never had a problem doing this.)

I clicked TextEdit in my hard drive and I got only a blank panel
headed: Untitled 2," below which there are opportunities to enter text
justified to the left, etc., and opportunity to change the 0 pt, other
options (including a couple with pad locks), and below a ruler, than
an opportunity to type in text. There is no LCID 3081 or otherwise
anything else there.

Screwing around before I originally sent out a request for help, I
several times noted that my primary," Best cust dic" spell check list,
the only one I care about, was listed first, highlighted and checked
under "Custom Dictionaries" and the system still didn't work with the
given document up to be worked on. But I've probed on.

I just now went thru Preferences > Dictionaries. . . and got the
panel: "Custom Dictionaries" with a box including "Custom
Dictionary" [apparently the default] and below an option to click
"Add. . ." [I'm now following my scribbled notes made as I worked my
way thru the Dictionary system, and believe it has changed since I was
at some point able to again add my "Best cust dic."] I click and got
a panel "Add Dictionaries" with first a sub-menu labeled "Desktop." I
clicked the up/down arrow there and got a repeat "Desktop" just
shifted to the right a bit with a check mark to its left (and which
option would not remain available). But below that is a menu, or
scroll box, listing all the documents and folders on my desktop
(including "Best cust dic" which I thought I'd lost). It was
highlighted. [Later I tried "New. . ." on the "Add Dictionaries" menu,
which again included in a scroll box with all of my desktop files. I
did not pursue the "New" course. ("Best cust dc" was there but dimmed
with most other files.)]

Below that another menu bar labeled SHOW: then [boxed] "Speller custom
dictionary." Clicking the up/down arrow there I get "All documents."
Two options. [At that point I followed thru trying both with
eventually the same old final negative result.] (To the left is "Hide
preview.") Then below the "SHOW, Speller custom dictionary" is some
text: "Choose custom dictionaries file to use." I click OPEN, lower
right.

I'm returned to "Custom Dictionaries" with "Best cust doc" now listed
first (with a check in its box). And with English (US) in place. I
clicked OK, got back to Preferences, where I clicked OK and got a
warning: "The custom dictionary "Mac HD:Users:bobtracy:desktop;'Best
cust dic' is not available." So I'm defeated again in loading my prime
custom spell checker. And, of course, my "Add" option. i.e., to add to
my custom dictionary, remains dimmed.

Another related issue for me involves an icon I found on my desktop
labeled "Best cust dic" but unlike the usual Word document icon with
upper right corner folded and the blue W down left. It's quite small
and I can barely make out a small multi-colored square in the upper
right, below that "ABC," and lower right a red check mark. In any even
it's available if all else fails toward recapturing my much needed
custom spell checker.

In any event I would much appreciate any thoughts any of you might
forward, and tremendously appreciate the suggestions, and time
represented, which has already been sent. Bob Tracy. (dsrtplace15 at
yahoo dot com)