Custom dictionary is not available

[WFG]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: intel

Every time I open a document I get the following message: "The custom dictionary 'Custom Dictionary' is not available." I have manually installed new dictionaries and made sure they were set to "no language". I even uninstalled then reinstalled the program, but nothing helps. Curiously, for the first couple of weeks after I installed the program the first time, everything worked fine. But once it stopped working, reinstallation did not help. I still cannot add to or use the custom dictionary. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions anyone has. Thanks.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Try going into Dictionaries in Spelling and Grammar Preferences,
selecting the dictionary, clicking Edit, and making a small change, and
re-saving the dictionary.

 

[WFG]

The solution you suggested worked.
Thank you very much.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Oh good! Thanks for confirming.

 

[Helena Tagesson]

I have the exact same problem! But when try to follow the instructions above, the "edit" option is grey and unselectable (or whatever it is called in English). Any suggestions?

many thanks,

Helena
Sweden

 

[Ingrid]

Nothing works, what did help was moving the "Microsoft User Data" out of my "Documents" folder to "Library", then the Spanish Dictionary would work as should (i.e. not underlining all words containing an accent with red lines), but as soon as I quit or restart the User Data is back in my Documents folder.

Everytime I try to either add or replace a word in one of the (custom) dictionaries and with each new document I start, end as soon as I changed the language settings for a document I get a "custom dictionary X not available" for all the ones I use. Yet the words I add stick there it seems.

Application keeps crashing as soon as I have a Spanish document open. Hey, I need to be able to use multiple languages at once!

I have the exact same problem! But when try to follow the instructions
above, the "edit" option is grey and unselectable (or whatever it is called
in English). Any suggestions?





many thanks,





Helena Sweden

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I have the exact same problem! But when try to follow the
instructions above, the "edit" option is grey and unselectable (or
whatever it is called in English). Any suggestions?

Someone else just posted somethign similar and here is what I posted in
reply:
The solution I found (and hopefully it'll work for you too) was to
locate the file corresponding to this dictionary in the Finder, drag it
to the Word icon in the Dock to open it, make a small modification and
save. This corrected whatever was wrong with the file and it became
available in Word (Office) again,

A simple drag and drop is usually sufficient to open it in Word.



Corentin

 

[etcstgo]

Application keeps crashing as soon as I have a Spanish document open. Hey, I need to be able to use multiple languages at once!

There is a known bug affecting Spanish documents. Read more here:
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...d/e15548143c0a6945/fae47b1c856e7fe1?lnk=gst&q.

Patricio Mason
Santiago, Chile

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

There is a known bug affecting Spanish documents. Read more here:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.mac.office.word/browse_t
hread/thread/e15548143c0a6945/fae47b1c856e7fe1?lnk=gst&q.

There are two issues there and I'm not sure they are specific to Spanish
(I get them both in French as well).
- custom dictionary is greyed-out: I fixed it on my Mac by opening it in
Word, modifying it and saving it.

- non-roman characters: Well that's a bug for all languages. You can't
enter a word that has non roman characters, like Greek letters for
instance (I get a lot of these in scientific text: beta-cell,
RBP-Jkappa...).

Both issues have of course been reported to MS and, like everybody
else, I am anxiously waiting for an update that will with this,

Corentin

 

[Donald Stidwell]

Interesting. I translate our Pastor's sermons from English to Spanish and so
the translations I do contain both languages - a paragraph of English
followed by the translated paragraph in Spanish and to date, I've not run
across this particular bug. I also have two custom dictionaries - one in
English and one in Spanish. I wonder if this is an issue when using only all
Spanish, or I have just been lucky?

The issue I keep running into is that occasionally, Word "forgets" the
location of my custom dictionaries and I have to tell it again where they
are located.

Don

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I also have two custom dictionaries - one in
English and one in Spanish. I wonder if this is an issue when using only all
Spanish, or I have just been lucky?

I think you've been lucky.
I also suspect thatOffice 2008 didn't like dictionaries created with
2004 or before for some reason. With a new custom dictionary created
with 2008 I never have any problem.
That would also explain why the open-modify-save trick could work:
resaving the file through Word 2008 writes it back in a format Word 2008
likes and it fixes the issue (just my theory).

Corentin

 

[Ingrid]

Interesting. I translate our Pastor's sermons from English to Spanish
and so the translations I do contain both languages - a paragraph of English
followed by the translated paragraph in Spanish and to date, I've not
run across this particular bug. I also have two custom dictionaries -
one in English and one in Spanish. I wonder if this is an issue when using
only all Spanish, or I have just been lucky?





The issue I keep running into is that occasionally, Word "forgets" the
location of my custom dictionaries and I have to tell it again where they
are located.





Don






Usually I have documents in three languages opened, US English, Dutch and Spanish. With English or Dutch o both it is okay, but as soom as I open a Spanish document: crash. If I uncheck the automaticaly spell check option under "tools --> language" it is fine, but only if I can get there before it crashes.

Oh, and my autorecovery docs usually lag behind the originals :-S

Alright, I opened the Custom Dictionaries, took out some weird characters or retyped them, saved them, and now nothing works anymore, I don't even see red lines under names of Croatian Villages in any document I'm working on anymore... great.

Tell me how it is possible these guys back in VA write over 5 billion lines of code for an OS nobody wants, but cannot write a few lines to fix a program that everybody uses...

Thanks though :-(

 

[etcstgo]

Interesting. I translate our Pastor's sermons from English to Spanish andso
the translations I do contain both languages - a paragraph of English
followed by the translated paragraph in Spanish and to date, I've not run
across this particular bug. I also have two custom dictionaries - one in
English and one in Spanish.

The issue is not with documents containing Spanish; it's to do with
documents containing Spanish marked as such that you try to
spellcheck.

Most of the time you can safely spellcheck simple documents such as
you describe. Attempting to spellcheck more complex documents,
however, may or will crash Word. If Word doesn't crash, attempting to
add terms to a Spanish custom dictionary will fail at best or wipe out
the dictionary altogether at worst.

Patricio Mason
Santiago, Chile

 

[John McGhie]

Which is a bug, and there's yet another attempt to fix it on the way
{sigh...}

The issue is not with documents containing Spanish; it's to do with
documents containing Spanish marked as such that you try to
spellcheck.

Most of the time you can safely spellcheck simple documents such as
you describe. Attempting to spellcheck more complex documents,
however, may or will crash Word. If Word doesn't crash, attempting to
add terms to a Spanish custom dictionary will fail at best or wipe out
the dictionary altogether at worst.

Patricio Mason
Santiago, Chile

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

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

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Madelaine]

None of these options seem to work for me. I've foind the dictionary and
made changes, I've changed my dictionaries while in word - custom dictionary
still disappears!

Any other suggestions?
M

 

[John McGhie]

Sorry: We need to know which version of Word, which version of Mac OS you
are using, which language you are working in, and which "options" exactly
that you have tried.

Until you tell us that, we can't answer.

None of these options seem to work for me. I've foind the dictionary and
made changes, I've changed my dictionaries while in word - custom dictionary
still disappears!

Any other suggestions?
M

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

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

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[catalyst]

John, and everyone -

I'm about to pull out what little hair I have left over this issue! I've tried the tips suggested here (and elsewhere) with no success: I still keep seeing the dreaded message that "The Custom Dictionary is not available".

I'm running the latest Word 2008 version (12.1.2) on a G5 with OS 10.4.11. My Word prefs>spelling and grammar> custom dictionary> language is set to "none". The default language in Word's Tools menu is English(US).

My custom dictionary now contains only about 30 words (!), despite having loaded it up previously in Word X with perhaps thousands of technical terms. Some of the "exotic" new words I've had to add to the custom dictionary include such rarities as "the", "by", and "is"!!!

My custom dictionary thus no longer holds the product of years of manuscript preparation, and will not accept new additions to it.

I'd been hoping that the recent, massive update would have addressed this problem, but no dice.

I long for the days of Word 5.1 . . .

Eric

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Eric:

Pulling of hair will not help. In fact, if you are as tonsorially
challenged as I am, any more hair-pulling may leave you wearing a rug

Nor will yearning for Word 5.1. If we are to solve this problem, we need to
stop the "emotion" and concentrate on the science

I say all this because it gets complex from here. So we need you to stay
with us.

First: The components. There are Five components involved with spelling
any document. These are the document, Word, the Spelling Engine, the Main
Dictionary, and the Custom Dictionary.

Let's start with the document. If the text in the document is marked with a
language you do not have installed, then nothing works an you get exactly
the indication you currently have -- you need to add simple common words to
the dictionary.

So the first thing is to look up "Language" in the Help and use
Tools>Language>Set language to check which language is selected. Check the
text in several places: users can set language word-by-word throughout the
document.

Note that just "English" is not close enough -- there are 29 different kinds
of English.

Which one is set?

We need to get this bit right before we can do the next step.

Cheers

John, and everyone -

I'm about to pull out what little hair I have left over this issue! I've tried
the tips suggested here (and elsewhere) with no success: I still keep seeing
the dreaded message that "The Custom Dictionary is not available".

I'm running the latest Word 2008 version (12.1.2) on a G5 with OS 10.4.11. My
Word prefs>spelling and grammar> custom dictionary> language is set to "none".
The default language in Word's Tools menu is English(US).

My custom dictionary now contains only about 30 words (!), despite having
loaded it up previously in Word X with perhaps thousands of technical terms.
Some of the "exotic" new words I've had to add to the custom dictionary
include such rarities as "the", "by", and "is"!!!

My custom dictionary thus no longer holds the product of years of manuscript
preparation, and will not accept new additions to it.

I'd been hoping that the recent, massive update would have addressed this
problem, but no dice.

I long for the days of Word 5.1 . . .

Eric

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

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

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[catalyst]

Hello John -

Thanks for your encouragement and advice.

I selected all the text in the manuscript I'm currently working on, then went to Tools > Language > Set Language, and chose English (US).

Doing so removed the red underlines of all common words. Progress!

Could not add any technical terms to the Custom Dictionary however. In Word > Prefs > Spelling and Grammar, Custom Dictionary is checked, and its language is set to none.

I'll be grateful for your continuing help.

Cheers,

Eric

 

[James B. Waddell]

For some reason my main dictionary has disappeared, every time I use spell check despite words being horribly misspelt it says all is good. I want my main dictionary back, I am using word 2004 and 10.4.11 of Mac OS, I am going crazy!!!