British spell-checking

[Grablevskij]

Could you help me to change American spell-checking in MS Word to British, please. It must be simple, but for some reasons I fail to do that.

Michael

 

[David L.]

Open Word, and open a document. Go to the main menu across the top and Click on Tools. That will give a drop-down menu, and the fifth item is Language, which Choose. This will open another small window listing languages. You will see English(US) as the first language listed. But go down the list alphabetically, and you will come to English(Aus) - (Australian) - , and English(UK), which Choose.

 

[Grablevskij]

Yes, I did that. Now and before. But failed to succeed. American is still dominating. I tried to set British as the default language, but it didn't help. Tried to switch off automatic definition of langiages, that didn't help too.

Michael

 

[Simosito]

That's strange.
What about deleting the AmE dictionary?

(Maybe if you write what Ms Word is your, we can do something more)

 

[Grablevskij]

I might as well delete the American dictionary. Could you suggest how?

My MS Word is of MS Office 2003 without any service packs. And there are some figures there (11.5604.5606), maybe the number of the release or something. Don't know, whether they are useful or not.

Michael

 

[Simosito]

Well, I haven't used M$ Word since Office 2000.
So, I don't *exactly* know how to delete/change the dict.
Maybe you can ask Clippy...

 

[Amigos4]

I might as well delete the American dictionary. Could you suggest how?

My MS Word is of MS Office 2003 without any service packs. And there are some figures there (11.5604.5606), maybe the number of the release or something. Don't know, whether they are useful or not.

Michael

Caution: You may want to reconsider 'deleting' the American dictionary. :shock:
Once you start screwing around with deleting programs/files from Word you always run the risk of creating additional problems. Let's see if we can identify a 'work-around' that will help your situation.

Cheers,
Amigos4

 

[Simosito]

What about switching to OpenOffice?

 

[Amigos4]

Could you help me to change American spell-checking in MS Word to British, please. It must be simple, but for some reasons I fail to do that.

Michael

Michael,

Try closing and re-opening your Word program. Go to 'tools' and 'language'; select 'English: U.K." Let us know if this fixes the problem! My hunch is that, for whatever reason, you couldn't change from one language to another without closing and re-opening Word.

Good luck!

Cheers,
Amigos4

 

[Grablevskij]

Oh, I have tried everything I could imagine. I'm not a profy but a rather experienced user accustomed to clerical work. I have been using Word for maybe 10 years or more. Not that I would desperately long for British spelling, but I'd like to have it. Thank you for your advice, I'll try to torture local professionals.

Michael

 

[Grablevskij]

I did that. But it depends not on Word itself but on Windows. I changed the keyboard to British instead of US. And it worked. But not like I expected. For example now it doesn't like "labor", but accepts "program" and "organization". But anyway there is something at least.

Michael

 

[David L.]

I typed in 'honourable' and with Word open, using the same document, switched back and forth a few times between US and UK English; and then tried it with 'honorable'. Each time, no fail, it was accepted or rejected by the correct dictionary I'd chosen.
I wonder, therefore, when you installed Word, did you do a Custom install to save on disk space, omitting certain dictionaries, languages, and all the rest that can be left out with a Custom install?
(I note that the spell-checker for this forum is US English - it gives me a red alert every time I type in 'honourable'! )

 

[Grablevskij]

Thank you, I'll try your ideas later. Maybe I really should take the disc with MS Office and install some more elements.

Michael

 

[rewboss]

IAnd it worked. But not like I expected. For example now it doesn't like "labor", but accepts "program" and "organization".

There's a reason for that.

In British English, the spelling "program" is used for computer programs: everything else is "programme". And even in British English, "organization" is an acceptable variant spelling (generally, the -iz- spelling is becoming more common in Britain).

Word's spelling correction is notorious for this kind of thing. I turn mine off completely (which is surprisingly difficult to do) because it was just so much trouble. It will often default, for no apparent reason, to whatever language it thinks you're trying to type in. I've known mine to give up completely and switch to Italian, despite not having the Italian dictionary installed.