Mac Forum / Applications / Word / October 2007

Kia Ora Dave...

You can't "look" in a Microsoft Word dictionary, it's a compiled binary
file.

You can look in your Custom Dictionary, and there SHOULD be nothing in it,
unless you have added words to the dictionary during spelling.  Which so
far, you haven't.

That #LID 1033 line simply means "This custom dictionary will work only in
America English.  So I would delete that line while you are there.

When you do, your Custom Dictionary will show that it is set to "No
Language" and it will then work correctly in ANY of the 29 flavours of
English that Word can spell.Spell-Checking back on.

It gets turned off when you edit a custom dictionary to avoid problems.

Now, you need to set your Normal template into English AUS.

Close all the other documents, open your Normal Template, Select All.  (It
helps to turn your Show/Hide ON so you can see paragraph marks, so you can
see  that you have selected something.

Now go to Tools>Language>Set Language an set the language to "English AUS".

Now (and this is important) click the "Make Default" checkbox in the dialog,
and OK.

Now add and delete a "space" or some other character.  This simply marks the
template as needing a save.

Then:  Save the template and Quit Word (this forces Word to save the
template and clear its memory).

When you restart, your spelling ought to be working properly.  At least for
documents in the future.

Spelling is critically dependant on the "Language" marked on the text you
want to check.  If your text is marked with a language you don't have, or
with "No Proofing", Word's spelling checker will leave it alone, no mater
how bad it is.

Now:  carry out that search the Help recommended in the document that would
not spell-check.  The appearance of that notice about "No Proofing" means
that there is some "no proofing" text in the document somewhere.

Documents that were created before you fixed your normal template, and
documents created by someone else, will all have to be explicitly set into
English AUS before your spell-checking will work.

Hope this helps

I'm having dictionary and spell checking problems.

I have just gone Mac and bought Office:Mac 2004.

There seems to be nothing in my dictionaries. I've tried to change
dictionaries to the various Aus, UK, US English but I get no
difference. When I look in the dictionary, all there is is "#LID 1033"

There are no red lines under any of my misspellings. When I ask for a
spelling and grammar check, it goes through the document but doesn't
nominate any misspelled words, instead it ends with: "The spelling and
grammar check is complete. Text set to (no proofing) was skipped. To
find (no proofing) text, click Edit/Replace, click More, click Format,
click Language ad choose (no proofing)."  I've followed those
instructions but this has changed nothing.