Standalone custom dictionary installer

[andy gilman]

For a large enterprise project I would like to make an installer to install a
custom dictionary containing all our specific terms for the project.

Now, it takes approximately one minute to manually add the custom dictionary
but we may not be dealing with the most technical people here.

I'd like something standalone that will just install the dictionary in a
simple step.

Is there a way of doing this?

My language of choice is C# but I have zero experience in office development
and would appreciate pointers in whether this can be done and where to start.
If it only takes 5 minutes to make an actual project that you could provide
me then that would be teriffic!

-simon

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?YW5keSBnaWxtYW4=?=,

You need to first consider how you want this to function. Generally, in more
recent versions of Word, a user's custom dictionaries are stored under the
user's profile, by default in this path

C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Microsoft\Proof

An enterprise installation might put them somewhere else. So you might want to
check with the IT department whether they've chosen somewhere else.

Another approach would be to search the system for *.dic files, and install it
there.
---
Once the *.dic file is in place, it should be listed under "Custom Dictionaries"
(via Tools/Options/Spelling and Grammar) next time Word is started up, and the
user can activate it there.

If you don't want the user to go through these steps, then you'll need to
automate Word and Add the custom dictionary:

Application.CustomDictionaries.Add(FileName:="Full path to *.dic file")

Note: in this case, it wouldn't matter in which file path you save the custom
dictionary, it could even be in a shared folder in a network location.

For a large enterprise project I would like to make an installer to install a
custom dictionary containing all our specific terms for the project.

Now, it takes approximately one minute to manually add the custom dictionary
but we may not be dealing with the most technical people here.

I'd like something standalone that will just install the dictionary in a
simple step.

Is there a way of doing this?

My language of choice is C# but I have zero experience in office development
and would appreciate pointers in whether this can be done and where to start.
If it only takes 5 minutes to make an actual project that you could provide
me then that would be teriffic!

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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