Word: UK English. Can it be this hard?

[Loose rivets]

People on forums are having the same problem. Can MS really be this thick, or is it me . . . again?


Even set it as default, and colour is still comes out color.


I have to have the keyboard set to US, but other than that, I'd accept a global change of Spell check within the OS.



Note: I can change a given set of text by Review Language Set proofing Language - But I have to select the text before it will change.

I want it set as default for any document.




.

[SamYeager]

Office Button -> Word Options -> Proofing -> Custom Dictionaries... -> Dictionary Language -> English (U.K.) seems to work ok for me in Word 2007 although I have to admit it's not immediately obvious.

[Loose rivets]

Office Button. Erm, off to laptop with 2007. Ten doesn't have one.



But in 2010, I did look at Review / Language / Set proofing language.

Set it for the umpteenth time to English UK - Guess what, it changed the English UK* on the strip at the bottom back to US.

(*left over from last night where I achieved UK setting by ‘Selecting’ the entire document text and changing to UK. I got that from a forum where others could not get a global UK setting.)

I'll try it with 2007 when Vista finally boots.

Right, looked where you said and it was a bit obscure what to do next. I went back to the Review / sect language etc, Very similar to 2010, and it offered to go to MS and get the download. It installed itself, and it works.

Two minutes, against 90 with this damn 2010.

[seacue]

Mr L Rivets,

I sent you a PM which might help.

seacue

[BOAC]

I think post #3 says you sorted it for 2010? You should have Office 2010 Tools as part of a standard install, I think.

[Loose rivets]

Well, it's a workaround at best. I still haven't got global control of Office that FIXES it to UK English.

As mentioned, an automatic download from MS on 2007 fixed the problem in a jiffy.

Clearly, the dictionary is in 2010, since I can 'select' the text and use UK English. It really does smack of the soft being corrupt but it's had time for updates.

I'd assume it was me if it weren't for folk on forums bemoaning the same fate.

[BOAC]

If you have Office 2010 tools (in the Office folder) go to language preferences.

[Loose rivets]

What! For the 4564532464523456467697445 th time?



While I'm waiting for my son to fine a minute to come round, (I may live that long) I'm just using the fix above on the spelling. One kind Ppruner is filtering out words that leave me feeling I must still be at secondary school level English. He has a very, very keen eye.

I'm now having to go back to the front end of the book to try to bring old writing up to a more experienced standard. Soooooo clunky and so a lot of work.

One thing that's still annoying me is the flickering of the letters as I write - and indeed the next line down becomes underlined for flickering fractions of a second.

There may be a tool somewhere that smooths the laying out of the font, but it looks for all the world like the visual processing just can't keep up.

Decent graphics on the MB, HDMI out etc.

[Capetonian]

I had similar problems with Word and changed to Open Office (it's changed its name now to Apache I think). It is more intuitive and user friendly than MSW and not as complex, fewer bells and whistles that you won't need, and it's free.

A friend of mine who is totally computer illiterate, and who is also writing a book, changed to OO on my advice and is delighted with it.

If you have something already created in .doc format on MSW, OO will read it and convert it to .odt format, and the changes will be minimal unless you have really fancy formatting and in particular, indexing may not pull across correctly.

This may not help you in your case, but I thought it worth mentioning as it solved my problem and that of my friend.

[Feline]

IBM Lotus Symphony

I got tired of MS Word somewhat after 2003. Moved to OO but it didn't feel comfortable, so moved again to IBM Lotus Symphony which suits me down to the ground. Particularly like the fact it opens .docx documents without blinking, It also supports Commenting (which I use quite a lot) and is totally compatible with people who are using Comment in any flavour of MS Office. It comes with word processing, spreadsheet and presentation (it also incorporates its own browser which I don't use very much).
It would rather you filed in .odt format, but will happily file in .doc format (after warning you that there could be formating problems - but I've never come across a problem yet).
Oh yes! It's free too!
Oh, and it has US English, UK English and Australian English (Strewth!) dictionaries.

[Loose rivets]

Sorry BOAC, my quip was made through a haze of French grape-juice. I didn't pick up on the Tools Folder. With great excitement I opened that to find . . . (roll of drums) the same menu showing it set to UK English.

When I took the offer of looking at all the language settings for each Office program, they just said, English.


Roger, the Open Office etc. (as in pilot-speak, of course.) I'm considering making an about turn, but a certain bloody-mindedness is driving me along.

It's almost as if each incarnation of Word has met with a new level of disapproval. So many are staying with 2003.



It's sad really, because I can work in my Word Perfect and send out an early .doc which everyone can read. What I can't do, is have that Word document edited, and then put it back in Word Perfect. That is THE reason I'm having to get into the modern world.

I accept that kind of problem goes away with the Open source software, but I'll press on for the moment and try to master things. I'll post if I do.

[BOAC]

my quip was made through a haze of French grape-juice

- only jealous

If you had English (UK) <default> ......Enabled.....'tick Installed, I would also suggest quitting and using OO. The only problems I have had with OO have been in progs using Vbasic in OO where code changes are needed.

[finncapt]

Capetonian

Are you thinking of Libre Office?

I use it all the time and if you want .doc there is a setting for it.

[Keef]

I never quite worked out the relationship between Open Office and Libre Office. As near as I can gather, Open Office was bought by another company and made "Closed Office" whereupon the team left and set up "Libre Office". There was more after that, but by then I'd removed both from the PC.

I just carried on using my copy of MS Office 2003, which does all I need to do. I was given a copy of Office 2007 by a grateful "client", but after a couple of days I gave up on it and went back to 2003.

I don't need all those "dropdown" ribbons, and I like menu items to stay where they are, rather than moving around depending on what I'm doing. I've been assured many times that I can configure it and fix those menus to be the way I like them - but they are already that way in Office 2003.

I have the plugins that allow me to read X-rated documents (.docX, .xlsX etc) so it all works for me.

The only thing I can't do is get the spellcheck to work in French, German, etc but I can live with that. I do most of my "foreign" writing on the iPad because that changes the display keyboard to suit, which is a lot easier.

[Milo Minderbinder]

Open Office & Libre Office are fine for single users, but in a networked business environment they are slow. Access time across a network is noticeably slower.

For business use, Lotus Symphony may be a better bet. That is IBM's fork of the OO code base. It does less, but arguably better.

[seacue]

As I say below, OO and LibreO are both free and easily available.

For what little it's worth, I wrote the following:

As I understand things, most of the developers of OpenOffice took offense at the transfer from Sun Microsystems (when Oracle bought Sun) and shortly transferred OpenOffice to Apache ,,, an umbrella for open-source software.

Many of the former OpenOffice developers started LibreOffice, keeping the same names for the components and continuing the version numbers. So much, so good. [Libre as in free - ˇCuba Libre!]

I'd guess that Sun did quality control. I wonder how much quality control remains the farther the developers get from Sun.

Some Linux distributions come with OpenOffice and some with LibreOffice. The widely distributed Ubuntu comes with LibreO... But, then again, Ubuntu did a "Microsoft" and drastically changed its human interface a year or so ago. That makes me doubt their dedication to maintaining a familiar huiman interface for LibreOffice.

As I said, YMMV. Both are free and available from NINITE.COM. Ninite is an excellent place to get legitimate free Windows software. I have downloaded LibreOffice. It seems to demand more processor umph than OO. That's not a problem on recent computers, but would perhaps matter on an old and weak one.

Good luck,

seacue

[Loose rivets]

Takes pulse. Puts away large hammer and resolves to be calm.


'tother day, after turning on 2007 in Vista.

Right, looked where you said and it was a bit obscure what to do next. I went back to the Review / sect language etc, Very similar to 2010, and it offered to go to MS and get the download. It installed itself, and it works.

Two minutes, against 90 with this damn 2010.

Today, I booted me laptop in Vista to see if if flickered when I write. It didn't, but then I noticed it had changed back to American English.

Calmly, and without doing one , I resolved not to notice and return to the problem of the day. Tried Word 2010 on the PC. It didn't flicker either. I put in a huge .docx to see if it became burdened with a big file. It was fine.

I'm having dreams of flying a fly-by-wire aircraft in which all the wiring has been platted by my granddaughter.

[Mac the Knife]

Another vote for IBM Lotus Symphony!

And Symphony is one of the only alternative apps that seems to get Powerpoint more-or-less right.

Having said that, I use LibreOffice mostly and since, like 99% of people, I don't generate complex documents or spreadsheets with obscure macros, I don't have any problems.

Office 2003 is still easily the most functional of the MS office suites.

Mac

[Keef]

A thought occurs to me, LR.

My hazy memory says that all these Word settings are stored in a file called "Normal.dot". I remember having all kinds of problems a while ago, and traced it to the fact that I had several different "Normal.dot" files in different places. One was the "master" that it used, and was where I had put it. That one was "write protected" for whatever reason, so whenever I made a change, it put a new copy in one of the standard places where MS keeps these things. Or something like that.

I remember rounding up all the errant normal.dots and deleting them. I put one copy in a place where I could find it easily (F:\Templates) and set all the options to what I wanted. Then I checked the template copy - unchanged. There was another new copy umpteen levels down in C:\ which I "moved" to F:\Templates. I changed the "default file location" again, and it's stayed there since then, and my settings have behaved.

That's with Office 2003. No doubt it's all different in Office 2013.

I did the same with Excel, with the same beneficial results.

[Milo Minderbinder]

Seacue

the history is a bit more complicated than that - the developers actually jumped ship after Sun was sold to Oracle. Oracle made it clear that their plans for open source software were very ill-defined, and wouldn't guarantee that OO would remain in their remit. So the developers left and took their toys with them.
As to Sun doing QA work.....the main input came from many sources, a lot from the Linux companies and a very large share from IBM/Lotus. And the QA was carried out from within the OO project.
Sun really only got involved in the changes which led to their commercialised version (now dead) known as Star Office.
Remember that the program originated with the German company, Star Division, who were absorbed by Sun around 15 years ago. Sun Open Sourced Star Office as Open Office in an attempt to cut development costs.
The rationale behind buying Star Division was that it was cheaper than paying Microsoft for licences for MS Office. Same reason that IBM used the OO core code in Symphony: the development costs of Symphony were less than the tax to Microsoft to allow them to use Office across the whole business