dictionary/thesaurus?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lee C.
  • Start date Start date
L

Lee C.

Anybody know right off the name of the file(s) that contain the stock Word dictionary entries? I wanted to check out why some of my intentional misspellings were passing muster, and would have thought it ended with the extension .DIC, but that doesn't seem to be panning out for me.

TIA.
 
Check the language of the text you are trying to spell check It may be that
there are no proofing options set.
The standard dictionary is not editable.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail (e-mail address removed)
Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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There are two possibilities here:

1. The built-in dictionary (lexicon) contains spellings you don't want to
use.

2. You've inadvertently added an incorrect spelling to your custom
dictionary (Custom.dic by default).

In the case of (2), you can edit the Custom.dic file to remove the
misspelled word. Access it from Tools | Options | Spelling & Grammar (the UI
varies a bit with version, but it should be obvious in any version how to
open and edit the file). See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/EditCustomDic.htm

In the case of (1), you need to create an exclusion dictionary to mark the
word as misspelled even though Word thinks it's correct. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/ExcludeWordFromDic.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Anybody know right off the name of the file(s) that contain the stock Word
dictionary entries? I wanted to check out why some of my intentional
misspellings were passing muster, and would have thought it ended with the
extension .DIC, but that doesn't seem to be panning out for me.

TIA.
 
Thanks for the link for instructions re: excluding apparently approved spellings.

But, we did miss out on the part of the question that asked what the name of the data file was; I saw the part about the relevant file also being referred to as a lexicon, and then found 36 different .LEX files (I think I can safely exclude the ones in the Adobe folder though). Is one of these the data file for the Word speller? Or is it a matter of it just being ONE?
 
According to the article you say you read:

First you need to find the main dictionary file used by your version of
Office, which will have the suffix .lex.

In the case of Office 97 it will be called Mssp2_*.lex, whereas for Office
2000, the file is called Mssp3*.lex, where * represents your language. For
example, for US, UK and Canadian English, the file is called Mssp2_en.lex
(Office 97) or Mssp3en.lex (Office 2000).

Where this file is stored varies, depending not only on the version of
Office, but also on whether you upgraded from a previous version, did a
clean install, or have multiple versions installed. So the easiest way to
find it is to go into Windows Explorer, press Ctrl+F, and search for
Mssp2_*.lex (Word 97) or Mssp3*.lex (Word 2000).

If in doubt, you can get the full path and file name of the main dictionary
file from the Registry (although even the Registry path to look in varies,
so it's impossible to do programmatically!). This method is covered at the
end of this article.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Thanks for the link for instructions re: excluding apparently approved
spellings.

But, we did miss out on the part of the question that asked what the name of
the data file was; I saw the part about the relevant file also being
referred to as a lexicon, and then found 36 different .LEX files (I think I
can safely exclude the ones in the Adobe folder though). Is one of these
the data file for the Word speller? Or is it a matter of it just being ONE?
 
Suzanne S. Barnhill said:
According to the article you say you read:

LOL, nope, didn't say I'd read it. I said thanks for the link

I checked that it worked, and stored it for later use on the theory that I might later want to create an "exclusionary" dictionary. But I'd still not given up on maybe altering the one I had, perhaps with a hex editor if I had to.

But, thanks. I read down through the article this time and realized there was more info there than just the "exclusionary" dictionary stuff.
 
There is no way to edit the lexicon itself. The only way to "remove" a word
from the lexicon is to set it up as an exclusion.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Suzanne S. Barnhill said:
According to the article you say you read:

LOL, nope, didn't say I'd read it. I said thanks for the link

I checked that it worked, and stored it for later use on the theory that I
might later want to create an "exclusionary" dictionary. But I'd still not
given up on maybe altering the one I had, perhaps with a hex editor if I had
to.

But, thanks. I read down through the article this time and realized there
was more info there than just the "exclusionary" dictionary stuff.
 
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