Microsoft Word spell check problem on Mac, Please help!!!

becah

Hey all, hopefully I'm posting this in the right place!
I'd really appreciate help with this if anyone knows what might be going on.
Basically, I bought and installed Microsoft Word (part of Office:Mac 2004) for my Mac book.
I installed it correctly (at least I hope I did), but the spell-check refuses to work.

I could type anything in and it will not conduct the spell/grammar check. As soon as I type, the red toolbox flashes, and a Compatability report reads that 'Word cannot identify the text language'.
The explanation given is that the 'text in this document is set to a language
Word cannot identify. To change the language setting for this text, open the
Language dialogue box.'

I've set English (UK) as the default language, in both the Tools- Language
drop down menu and in the Word preferences menu.
When I do this to an already open Word document, it does recognise the mispelled words, but if I close that particular document and open a new one, it stops working again-even though when I check, the language settings have remained as I changed them!

I'm not very technically minded, but I've been using Word for years on PC's, and have never had such a frustrating problem. And I have made sure that the 'Do not check spelling or grammar' box is not checked!

Please help me! Thanks in advance!

xebec

I have pretty much the same problem as you, and it's a real pain in the ass! The problem is something to do with the normal template that Word uses when it creates a new document. Making English (UK) the default language should make a change to normal but it doesn't appear to keep the change. I just keep changing the language on every document I open.

Might get a solution over in the Mac forum.

Anti

Maybe best moved to the mac forum ?

Urban Weigl

I've never seen this problem. Since you bought Word legally, what I would do is call Microsoft's support line. After all, that's all part of the service when you buy something from Microsoft - you get to call their support people, who will solve problems for you. You might as well use it.

The only thing I can think of apart from that is: make sure you have the latest version of Word installed. Run the updater if in doubt.

xebec

Urban Weigl wrote:

The only thing I can think of apart from that is: make sure you have the latest version of Word installed. Run the updater if in doubt.

Have the latest version installed, not bothered ringing Microsoft. Have checked in my Normal template and the default language is set to English (UK), so it's not that either.

440Hz

My mate had exactly the same problem as this and I spent ages trying to fix it on her machine. I hate Word so it was a traumatic experience for me My first solution was to try and convince her to use Pages, when that didnt work I tried to fix the problem.

Literally, hours of looking at it and I was getting nowhere. Even though all the settings in Word are fairly straight forward and self-explanatory, the problem was that the application itself did not seem to adhere to the settings it was given.

Anyway, in the end the only thing that fixed it was to reinstall the standard /custom dictionary and point Word to it,. I also ended up rolling back to the previous release of the app and then everything worked perfectly.

The problem did seem to be a compatabilty issue with the current mac versio of word and the custom system dictionary.

Reinstall the dictionary and rollback Word would be my advice.

Best of luck.
K

Gordon

I've never had that problem, but have you tried neo office or open office as alternatives?

becah

Thanks for all the replies, kinda reassuring to know that i'm not te only one with this problem! Bought it legally, so I will give the a call and see if they can help me.
It's fully updated, but I did do a custom installation of the spell check, I'll try to custom install the dictonary and the roll back word and see if that solves it.

If anyone else has any more tips, keep them coming!
Thanks again!

VERYinterested

I had this problem a couple of years ago and it seems to stem from having your nice little Irish Tri-Colour displayed in the International section/Menu Bar. I rang Microsoft at the time as the spell checker did not work and all subsequent updates have failed to rectify the problem. So here's the fix they recommended that did the trick. Firstly quit Word, then go in to System Preferences and select 'International' unclick the box that is checked beside the 'Irish' flag and you will need to click the box beside the 'British' flag. If you do not want to display the Union Jack in your menu bar, you can choose to unclick the option at the base of the window that says 'Show input menu in menu bar'. Then you need to go in to 'Language' and select 'Edit List' you need to select 'British English' AND 'English'. Tick them both and click 'OK' then drag 'British English' to the top of the list. Open a new Word document and see if the spell checker works. There is no point opening an old document as it going to memorise the old regime. That worked for me and I have performed this action on several machines, Mac Book Pro, a 2004 iMac an a 2006 Intel Mac and it has solved the problem on all of them. I think the machines get confused by being called Irish but are expected to think in English.....sounds a bit like this messed up country we live in Let's know if it does the trick!

xebec

Yep, that fixed it for me anyways, thanks!

becah

Worked for me too! Thanks a million VERYintereted, can't believe that was why it wasn't working, cheers again

su_dios

Brilliant. This was driving me crazy!!