Spellcheck overload

E

Eagle

I have a long document for an academic paper and there are long passages in
English and long passages in Norwegian. I have applied language dictionaries
to the different paragraph styles. I would like the spelling mistakes to be
underlined in red in the document.

In the Options, I have "Hide Spelling Errors in this Document" unticked, but
when I do a spell-check, I get this message: "There are too many spelling or
grammatical errors in the document to continue displaying them. To check the
spelling and grammar of this document, choose Spelling and Grammar from the
Tools menu." Then in Options, Word automatically ticks "Hide Spelling Errors
in this Document" and the red underlines disappear. This is after I applied
the different dictionaries to the paragraphs.

How I can keep "Hide Spelling Errors in this Document" unticked so that the
words that are possibly misspelled stay underlined in red?

Thank you.
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

Are you saying that you are still encountering this error after using Tools
| Language | Set Language to set the language as English for the English
portions and Norwegian for the Norwegian portions? And you have the
Norwegian proofing tools installed? If you don't have Norwegian proofing
tools installed, then you will not be able to check spelling in Norwegian,
and that is the problem (virtually all the Norwegian text will be considered
misspelled). If that is the case, then select the Norwegian portions and
format them as "Do not check spelling or grammar."

The most efficient way to apply the language formatting is to have distinct
styles (paragraph or character, as appropriate) for the English and
Norwegian portions. The Norwegian styles should include the "Do not check
spelling and grammar" Language setting.
 
E

Eagle

Thank you, Suzanne.

I have applied the dictionaries to the paragraph styles, so the spell check
is working. The problem is that when I do a spell check, I get the error
message I quoted. This results in all the red underlining in the text
disappearing, so I can't see what words I might have misspelled as I type.
Apparently this is a common problem, but no one I know has a fix. I would
like to see the red underline, indicating that I might have made a spelling
error, as I type, but Word says "There are too many spelling errors ... to
continue displaying them." Of course, they aren't all errors, but Word
doesn't know that.

Thanks so much.
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

You shouldn't be seeing this unless the document contains a *lot* of proper
names and such. You could cut down on this issue by creating a special
custom dictionary just for this project and making it temporarily the
default custom dictionary. Then you can click "Add to dictionary" for the
names that are correct, so that Word will not have to mark them as
misspelled. Then all that will be left will be the actual misspelled words.
Don't forget to reassign Custom.dic as the default custom dictionary when
you have completed this project.

BTW, you confirm that you actually have the Norwegian proofing tools
installed? I'm pressing here because just assigning the Norwegian language
to the text will not do any good if you don't actually have the proofing
tools installed. English versions of Word come with only English, Spanish,
and French proofing tools. For other languages, it is necessary to buy a
separate Proofing Tools package (which contains the spelling and grammar
checkers and thesauruses for all the other supported languages). Unless you
have a Norwegian version of Word, then you don't have the Norwegian proofing
tools unless you have installed this package.
 
E

Eagle

Thanks again, Suzanne. Your answer is helpful.

Well, I am not sure if Norwegian Proofing Tools are installed on this
computer or not. The computer I am working on for this project is a Mac and
it belongs to a Norwegian. How can I tell if Norwegian Proofing Tools are
installed?
 
D

Daiya Mitchell

Always state version of Word when asking a question!

On the Mac, Office comes with all the proofing tools that exist for the
MacOffice--but there aren't as many. There does seem to be a Norwegian one,
though. To find out if it is installed, follow the directions here:
http://word.mvps.org/mac/SpellCheck.html#DifferentLanguage

Everything else Suzanne said (except that bit re buying the proofing tools)
is also true for the Mac.

Can you describe your document a bit? As Suzanne said, it must have a lot
of proper names to produce this error message, or perhaps academic jargon
that the proofing tools don't know. You can use her custom dictionary trick
on the Mac, still (neat trick, Suzanne!).

It may also depend on memory and speed of the computer, what Word can
handle. What's yours?

It doesn't always matter whether you are using a Mac or Windows, but see
here for Google/Entourage gateway to newsgroups for MacWord, MacExcel, and
other MS programs for the Mac, if necessary in future.
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/community/community.aspx?pid=newsgroups>

Don't bother reposting this question on a Mac group, though (I'd probably be
answering it anyhow).
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

I think Daiya has covered the bases here, so I'll defer to her knowledge of
Mac issues.
 
E

Eagle

Thank you for your help.

I am working on OS10, Word 2004. I checked and all the proofing tools are
installed. This is an academic post-grad dissertation for Oslo University.

As I mentioned in my earlier post I already applied the appropriate
dictionaries in the different paragraph styles for Norwegian and English.

The problem is that Word thinks there are too many misspelled words and so I
lose the red underlining. Maye it is because there are a lot of proper names.
Whatever the reason, I would like to know if there is a way I can change the
settings somewhere so I increase Word's capacity and I can retain the red
underlines. If not, then I think the only solution is to break the document
into several small documents so Word isn't overloaded and the red underlines
remain.

Do you know if I can do anything besides this?

Thanks again for your help.
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

You have already been given a solution for the proper names: create a new
custom dictionary and add them to it; then they won't be marked and you
won't have an overload.
 
E

Eagle

Yes, that's great Suzanne. Thanks so much.

Suzanne S. Barnhill said:
You have already been given a solution for the proper names: create a new
custom dictionary and add them to it; then they won't be marked and you
won't have an overload.
 

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