Editing Custom Dictionary - "File Conversion" dialog

Question

When editing a custom dictionary the user receives a dialog requesting they select the text encoding of the custom dictionary file.

Even if we create a new custom dictionary file the issue returns once Word is quit and opened again.

The problem is that once this problem occurs, then words from the custom dictionary are no longer used for spelling checking.

Has anyone else seen this issue or have any work arounds?

Thanks,

Marcus.

Answer 1

Yes, I've noticed that. In fact Word will even open Mac text files using the wrong character encoding (MS-DOS) and it does mixes file types when saving dictionaries.

However, no matter what their file type (.dic or plain Unicode Little Endian), dictionaries do work over here. Try creating a blank text file, save it as Plain Text > Other encoding > Unicode 5.1 (LItle-Endian) into /Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2011(the file's extension does not matter) and then enable it as a dictionary.

I myself have such a blank file that I use as a template for creating dictionaries (I create these according to the subject matter of the document I'm currently working on).

Pay attention to the languages. If you've defined a dictionary as English but your text is in French, it just won't be used. To avoid that, just leave the dictionary's language setting as None, in which case the dictionary will always be used, as long as it is enabled with a check mark.

Answer 2

Thanks Daniel.

Setting the dictionary's language to (none) fixes the issue of the custom dictionary not being available.

I guess we can live with the encoding error if it doesn't cause any issues.

Thanks for help,

Marcus.