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This seems like it must be a universal preference for anyone who uses Custom Dictionaries, so I hope I'm just missing something obvious: I have a book (fiction) with a lot of unusual names and place names, so I have created a Custom Dictionary specifically for that series of books. I can set its location to a OneDrive folder so changes to it apply across all my computers (during the day I work on my desktop, traveling and at night I work on my main laptop, and sometimes when I need ultimate portability I work on a Surface Pro tablet hybrid). If I want to add words to it, I need to make it the Default dictionary, or the words will instead be added to a pre-installed user dictionary. I wish it let me choose the Custom Dictionary to add to so I didn't have to keep changing the default, but this is a tolerable limitation, or at least less severe than the next problem.
The real problem is that I ONLY want this Custom Dictionary to be active for this document or other documents related to this series of books that use the same fictional names and words. This seems impossible. Both the current Default Custom Dictionary and the check boxes for which Custom Dictionaries are active are the same across all Word windows.
Doesn't that defeat the entire purpose of having a Custom Dictionary and a Default Custom Dictionary? These obviously won't apply to all documents, because if they applied to all docs, then there would be no need to create an additional Custom Dictionary -- you'd just use the built-in user dictionary as the one spot to save all words. That would be simpler. Therefore, the ONLY reason I can see for creating a new Custom Dictionary is because it's intended to only apply to some subset of all documents you use. And from there, it follows that there must, obviously, be a way to specify which Custom Dictionary or Dictionaries a particular document will use. Because you can have more than 1 Word window open at a time (multitasking), and that typically means different documents in different Windows, the Custom Dictionary must be attached to the document itself, not the window. But I can't see any way to specify or control this. It seems there's only one universal set of Custom Dictionary settings that applies to all documents.
What am I missing? Or is this just a broken design with no real way to use Custom Dictionaries?
Or is there some entirely different way to do what I'm trying to do? I just want to be sure that I can have a word list that won't be flagged in Word as misspelled on whatever computer I work and only when I'm working in that document. In any other document, those same special words should be flagged as misspelled, even if those other documents are open at the same time in other windows.
If there really is no way to do this, what are Custom Dictionaries for? How can anyone use them?
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
I agree that it would be helpful to have custom dictionaries associated with documents. You can make a suggestion to Microsoft using File | Send Feedback.
You are talking about marking words as correctly spelled for a particular document or documents?
There is no way to set a custom dictionary for a particular document and if there were, it would not travel with the document.
However, it is possible to use a custom style to tell word to not check the spelling or grammar. That marking travels with the document and applies on any computer where the document is opened. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to such a style.
Yes, words that are correct in one document but incorrect anyplace else. This is a near universal issue for fantasy and science fiction writers. It's an even bigger deal for editors who may work with dozens of different genre books every month, each with its own unique words. Also an issue for any fictional work with highly peculiar character names or books/articles mostly in English but with fragments of ancient or dead languages.
Thank you for the suggestion about suppressing the spell check for certain words. I can see why that could be a good work-around in many cases. However, for me, I fear that I would typo my own words (I found many just today where I had done exactly that). I want them spell-checked, just spell-checked using my Custom Dictionary.
I'm a fan of Word (and in spite of this problem, I still think it's far better than any other options), but I find this implementation of Custom Dictionaries quite odd: there are "Custom Dictionaries" but they are not limited to associated documents, which seems to me the primary use for having multiple Custom Dictionaries (as opposed to a single user dictionary where you just keep adding all new words). If it were just for specialized terms, like medical terms or jargon, just throw those into the user dictionary as they're used.
It seems that the only reason you would need more than 1 dictionary would be because you have words that are correct in 1 document and NOT in another (like character names or fake words). And from that it follows that you would need a way to specify which Custom Dictionary goes with which document. That Word offers Custom Dictionaries, but doesn't allow associating them with specific documents, is mind boggling to me. Worse, the Options page does have document-specific settings (like whether to embed fonts), so it's not like there's no way to store doc-specific attributes. Just include the Custom Dictionaries in that part of settings instead of in the application-wide settings. I don't see any justification other than failure to think it through properly.
My work-around will be to try to put all those words into a Custom Dictionary .dic file, put it on OneDrive, and set it as a Custom Dictionary on all my computers, and then do my best to remember to disable it when I'm not working on the book that needs those special words. I am certain that I will sometimes forget to disable it and typo a work that isn't flagged because the Custom Dictionary is still active, then release something with a misspelling just because of Word's malignant implementation of Custom Dictionaries. And even if by some miracle that never happens, it remains that I will be always wondering if I "left the stove on" while I'm writing, and keep checking in options to see if the Custom Dictionary is disabled when I'm not using it.
You are talking about marking words as correctly spelled for a particular document or documents?
There is no way to set a custom dictionary for a particular document and if there were, it would not travel with the document.
However, it is possible to use a custom style to tell word to not check the spelling or grammar. That marking travels with the document and applies on any computer where the document is opened. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to such a style.
Suzanne, thanks. Oh you bet I sent the feedback. :-)