Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Do I need to know anything in particular when creating custom dictionaries (word storage) when running spell check?

I think I want to add/store new [Spanish words], [American English words], and [British English words] in separate files outside the standard dictionary that I can archive/back-up and restore as needed.

Are there size limitations?
Is there a significant impact speed beyond a certain word-storage-file-size?
Are they easily corrupted?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Tracey
OpenOffice v4.1.5

According to this bug report, the limit was raised to 30,000 words per custom dictionary: Issue 48676 - Remove or expand limitation on User dictionary.
Of course adding dictionaries will require more resources but I don't think you would ever notice.
Just be aware of the location of the dictionaries so that you can backup them easily: [Tutorial] The OpenOffice User Profile.
I've never had any custom dic corrupted.
Note that the dics can be language sensitive.

Please add [Solved] at the beginning of the title in your first post (top of the topic) with the edit button if your issue has been fixed.

You have a simple, slower way to do what you want by adding words to the added words file(s) during spell checking.

If you have a list of words it is quicker and easier, but a hack, to build the added words file(s) yourself. You could have Spanish_1, Spanish_2 etc. Note that you must add every word like dog, Dog, dogs, Dogs, ..., dog's, dogs', Doge, dogged ... etc - the added words file does not work with a root (dog) with variable suffices (-s, -e, -ged etc), nor is a capital assumed - only a proper Huntspell dictionary does that.

An alternative method is to build your own Huntspell dictionary identical to the dictionaries supplied with AOO. This will entail much more work but will probably work (very slightly?) faster and probably be easier to maintain once set up. Words are defined as a root with different added endings.

Search the forum with dictionary to find multiple posts like Adding multiple foreign words to standard.dic, Use only custom dictionaries? and [Solved] Can dictionary get too big?. Follow the links in those posts for more information on the added words files; and proper dictionaries and what is entailed in sorting out the root endings.