Spelling and "Ignore"/"Ignore All"

[jd_wright]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel I have a document with a lot of seventeenth-century spellings and proper names, all of which Word is tagging as misspellings.

That's all well and good, but I keep having to click "Ignore" or "Ignore All" (I've tried both with the same results) again and again and again. For some reason, Word is not learning NOT to mark those words.

I don't want to add them to the dictionary, because some of them are too close to actual misspellings I might make (e.g., 17th C. "nothinge" and today's "nothing&quot, so please don't suggest that as a fix.

What am I doing wrong? Or what do I need to do to correct this incredible annoyance?

 

[Jim Gordon Mac MVP]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor:
Intel I have a document with a lot of seventeenth-century spellings and
proper names, all of which Word is tagging as misspellings.

That's all well and good, but I keep having to click "Ignore" or "Ignore
All" (I've tried both with the same results) again and again and again.
For some reason, Word is not learning NOT to mark those words.

I don't want to add them to the dictionary, because some of them are too
close to actual misspellings I might make (e.g., 17th C. "nothinge" and
today's "nothing"), so please don't suggest that as a fix.

What am I doing wrong? Or what do I need to do to correct this
incredible annoyance?

Hi,

You might try to find an Old English custom dictionary. Dictionary files
are simply lists of individual words followed by carriage returns saved
as text files having a .dic file extension.

You can tell Word to use or not use a particular custom dictionary in
Word > Preferences > Spelling and Grammar > Dictionaries. When you have
a document you want to have spell checked with the Old English
dictionary, just turn the dictionary on in the preferences, and then
turn it off when you're done with it.

It's easy enough to make your own custom dictionary, or add Old English
spellings to the built-in Custom Dictionary, which you will see if
you've already activated it.

See pages 232-235, Casting a Spell Check, in Office 2008 for Mac
All-in-One For Dummies for more information.

-Jim

 

[CyberTaz]

Are you saving the file after running the spell check? If not that would be
the fist likely suspect.

You can also get erratic results if you check spelling while Track Changes
is active as well as from some level of corruption in the file.

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

 

[jd_wright]

The file has been saved repeatedly since the first time I clicked Ignore All on all the words I want Word to ignore. It seems to make no difference--they are all still underlined when I open the file again.

Track changes is not on, as far as I know. I wouldn't know how to activate it if I wanted to.

As for corruption, I don't even know what that means.

 

[jd_wright]

An awful lot of work for me, especially when all I'm expecting is for the stupid software to DO AS IT'S TOLD.

Seriously, this is such a basic little command for Word to be screwing up--I hate it more than usual right now.

 

[CyberTaz]

Not knowing anything more about the document or its history I'm guessing
that corruption is at the root of the problem. Document corruption is
basically an 'internal confusion' within a file which can be attributed to a
number of causes. Some are described on this web page along with several
techniques which can be successful in removing the corruption or generating
a corruption-free copy:

http://word.mvps.org/Mac/DocumentCorruption.html

Try Procedure #2 & see if the new copy will retain your settings.

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

 

[Jim Gordon Mac MVP]

An awful lot of work for me, especially when all I'm expecting is for
the stupid software to DO AS IT'S TOLD.

Seriously, this is such a basic little command for Word to be screwing
up--I hate it more than usual right now.

Hi JD

Don't give up!

Go to Word > Preferences > Spelling and Grammar
Under Spelling click the checkbox for Suggest from Main Dictionary Only.

Does that fix the problem for you?

-Jim

 

[jd_wright]

Your last tip did the trick. Thanks for hanging in there with me!

I'm sure I'll be back again soon!