[Solved] English speller not working

[Ilan]

I updated to Open Office 3.0 on Windows XP and noticed my spell checker is no longer working.
It doesn't even recognize the word "the", and nothing else as well.
Can I easily uninstall the speller and reinstall it?
How does one do this?

Thanks,
Ilan

[Hagar Delest]

See here: [Tutorial] Spell check and Language configuration.

Thanks to add '[Solved]' at beginning of your first post title (edit button) if your issue has been fixed.

[Ilan]

Hi Hagar,
As usual your comments are very help and most appreciated.
I must have somehow erased the English dictionary - but I don't know how.
I went in and removed Classic French and Spanish and then found I had nothing but my Hebrew.
No problem, I added US English.

However I now no longer have the Thesaurus and Hyphenation.
Again, I thought to use your tutorial, but something has changed.
There is no longer (Installed OO directory/share/dict/oo) the file with the plain text definitions.

Rather than bothering you, I looked at another computer, also with OO 3.0 where everything works
and saw there was no longer the file and directory. Thus you probably need to update your excellent tutorial.

Even though I almost never use Thesaurus and Hyphenation, I'd like to have it anyway.
So my original question will be changed to how do I install these 2 things?

Thanks,
Ilan

[Hagar Delest]

Are you sure you've read the section 2? The tutorial has already been reworked for 3.0. You should find the extension in /program files/OOo3/share/extension/install. Then just install it. Or download it from the extension page.

[Ilan]

It is section 2 I'm referring to. It says:
Edit the file dictionary.lst in <OOo install folder>/share/dict/ooo [1] and only keep the bunches of 3 lines (DICT, HYPH and THES) with the locales you want. This is just a plain text file, open it with any basic text editor. I won't give further detail about this file because there is an explanation inside. It should just look like that :

As far as I can see, there is no longer share/dict/ooo (I remember that there used to be such a directory because I changed something in it).
Again, the main thing, the dictionary is indeed working. I just want the extra goodies as well.

Ilan

[Hagar Delest]

OOo 3.#
The dictionaries are now delivered as extensions!
It means that their removal is much easier. Just use the OOo extension manager (Tools menu) to uninstall the dictionary.
Beware, an upgrade may reinstall again the extensions installed by default and removed afterwards!
For *NIX systems, you need to run OOo as root to have enough rights to remove the dictionaries installed by default.
NB: if you want to tweak an extension (to remove locales for example, so that your language list is not cluttered with tickmarks for all the variations of a single main language), first disable the extension (Tools>Extension manager), then edit the dictionary.xcu file in the .../uno_package/... directory. You can also change that file in the extension itself before installing it if you've to use it several times (on different machines).

In 3.0, the whole process has changed. So look at the extension folder and not the /share/dict/ooo.

[Ilan]

I think we may not be understanding one another.
The dictionaries work fine, but I want the Thesaurus and Hyphenation.
I have 4 files in extension\install
dict-en.oxt
dict-es.oxt
dict-fr.oxt
he-IL-dict.oxt

I would assume I would need a couple of extra files for Thesaurus and Hyphenation,
but they are not there.
BTW the uno_packages has only a cache directory and no dictionary
(but I don't think I care about that anyway).
It is also curious that I have a French and Spanish oxt, even if the languages are not listed
(since I removed them).

[Hagar Delest]

I know your problem.

You should search for the files in that uno_package folder, it's the same process as 2.# but in dedicated folders in extensions. See that thread for further details: [Solved] OOo 3.0 Beta 2 dictionaries management. If there is no th_en_US_v2 file, then there is a problem with the extension. Perhaps linked to that one: [Solved] Odd Spell Check Disaster after update.

[Ilan]

Thanks Hagar,
Your help is much appreciated.
The trick was to double click on dict-en.oxt.
Then up comes the extension manager and informs you that you are about to install the thesaurus and hyphenation.
This is EXACTLY what I was trying to do.

Problem solved,
Ilan

[Hagar Delest]

Great.

I've updated the tutorial (see section 4). I hope it's more clear now for the structure.

[Ilan]

I looked at your modifications on the tutorial and find it somewhat confusing as what I see isn't what you see.
My uno_packages directory is totally empty.

In my case a double click on dict-en.oxt solved the problem.
I'll attach my screen capture so you can see what I see.

[Hagar Delest]

Yes, because you're looking at the installation folder (under /Program files). My screenshot applies on the user profile (where you should find the file for you also then).

NB: added this in the tutorial.

[Ilan]

I don't know where the user profile is under Windows. In Ubuntu it is under /usr
Is it in the registry?

[Hagar Delest]

See here: [Tutorial] The OOo user profile.