spelling and grammar checker malfunction revisited

[spike]

First Post:
use Word 2004 for Mac.
I've created a several hundred page manuscript. Suddenly when I
activate the spelling/grammar checker a note appears across the
bottom
of the panel saying spelling and grammar is being checked. The usual
window for spell check doesn't appear anymore. (It does so in other
word docs I have including another version of this manuscript). So
this is my only Word Doc that does this. All other actions are
disallowed. So I have to force quit the doc. It can't be anything
in
my prefs for Word because this same problem doesn't surface for other
Word docs. I've tried discarding the very last carriage return
symbol
at the end of the text (preceding end notes and index).
Any help?

First Reply:
confirmed ----eliminate last paragraph marker in doc at very end of
doc (not prior to index). Did this. Problem persists. I may have
gone to Word Prefs/Spelling Grammar/ and at the bottom there is a
button entitled CHECK. One of the things that occurs when you click
on this CHECK is that it "Word resets the internal Ignore All list so
that Word will check for all words for which you previously clicked
Ignore All." Could it be that since I got a large document with
toc, index, and endnotes, since I clicked on that CHECK button, I may
have inadvertantly totally overwhelmed the spell/grammar checker?? If
so I'm assuming now that if this is the source of the problem, I
simply have to erase this version of the doc and loose some editing.
This is not a huge catastrope, but just a significant bother. OR--
might it be that the doc is simply corrupted and there is another
procedure, other than the eilimination of the last paragraph marker???
Thanks for any insights!!!!

 

[CyberTaz]

See Clive Huggan's response to your original post. Please don't repost the
same issue - especially when someone is already attempting to assist you.

Also, it may just be a matter of terminology, but you *can't* "discard" the
last ¶ - it is there to stay. Follow Clive's suggestions & please stay with
the original thread for any further messages on the same topic.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Spike:

No, you can't "overwhelm" the Spelling and Grammar checker. You can provoke
it into a situation where it will stop displaying the red squiggly lines:
but that is unlikely to happen unless you are dealing with more than a
thousand pages with more than two errors on each line. If it does, you will
get a polite message to say that Word has stopped displaying spelling
errors.

You said you had discarded the last paragraph mark? If you did this
carefully, by pasting into a fresh clean document, you have eliminated the
most common cause of this error. Damn!

Before you begin, make sure you Accept any tracked changes in the document.
Sometimes these problems can be as a result of the spelling checker stopping
waiting for you to resolve a change in a hidden tracked change. Because
it's hidden, it can't display it and there it sits!!

There are two other possibilities. But first: I assume that you have
checked that all the text is correctly marked with the "language" you want
to use, and that that language is one you actually have installed? For
example: "English US" and "English UK" are diffeent languages (and both are
installed by default).

The next most likely is a corrupt Custom Dictionary. Find your cusom
dictionary and re-name it (don't delete it!). Then create a new blank one.
See if the spell check will complete then. It can happen that if you have a
corrupt entry in your custom dictionary and Word calls it while checking a
document, the spelling chacker can crash.

The last possibility I know of (and regrettably, the one I think you have)
is "Corrupt Paragraph". This is relatively quick to check for, but it can
take a long time to narrow it down...

1) Make a copy of the document.

2) Cut it in half: Top half in one file, bottom half in another.

3) Try the spell checker. If it completes in one and not the other, we
know that the problem is in the one that failed.

4) Cut the one that failed in half and try again.

Keep at it until the two pieces of document contain only one paragraph each.
The one that fails contains the bad paragraph Paste the bad paragraph
into TextEdit, then paste it back into the document and you will fix it.

Note: When a document falls over like this, there can be more than one bad
paragraph. Sorry about that: this can be a long job...

Hope this helps

--

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs

+61 4 1209 1410, <mailto:[email protected]> mailto:[email protected]