Spelling dictionary: where is the list of learned words?

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Level 1

94 points

Spelling dictionary: where is the list of learned words?

In MS Office all the technical words I have added to the spelling dictionary are stored in a simple text file. I now want to paste them into the Mac dictionary. Please can someone tell me if there is a text list of learned words and where it is stored.

I will be really annoyed if I have to add each of the hundreds of words manually.

Thanks,

G5, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Jun 17, 2008 12:27 AM

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Answer 1

oxcart Author

Level 1

94 points

Jun 17, 2008 9:35 AM in response to BDAqua

Sorry, but there is no such folder. I have tried searching for it. If it exists it must be invisible to spotlight. Neither can I find a file called "en", except where they are associated with applications such as Netscape and Adobe.

Any other suggestions?

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Answer 2

oxcart Author

Level 1

94 points

Jun 18, 2008 12:57 AM in response to BDAqua

Great that worked, I had to teach it one word before the file was created.

I took my custom dictionary from Word and pasted it in but it did not work. The reason was that the words were separated by a return character. I removed all the returns so that all the words were in one big long string, pasted it into the file en. It worked!

Many thanks,

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Answer 3

oxcart Author

Level 1

94 points

Jun 26, 2008 12:20 AM in response to oxcart

I thought I had an answer but apparently not. After a restart it is back to square one.

The file "en" still contains the long string of words that I pasted in from my Word dictionary. However, the spell check only remembers the words I taught it manually.

In fact, I can even delete the manually taught words from the file and it still remembers them.

This means that the "en" files seems not to be the only source of info for this spell checker.

Any other suggestions out there?

Thanks.

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

250,975 points

Jun 26, 2008 1:31 AM in response to oxcart

Again, I'm in Leo right now, but spent the last hour searching for it/them.. no soap.

So I added some real long names to it, they showed up in en.

I made a new file in Text Edit with these words...

qwerty
asdfgh
zxcvbnm

Changing one slightly to zxcvbnmkl and highlighting it in Text Edit, Right Click>Spelling & Grammer>Show Spelling & Grammer... it shows that zxcvbnmk is the proper spelling... en was not changed, as it was with the real long names!?

zxcvbnmk does not exist in the content of any file, I have not found a Folder or File that was changed on those last three words!?

I don't know how long of list you have, but a possible workaround...

Load/paste them all into Text Edit, Select All>Right Click>Spelling & Grammer>Show Spelling & Grammer... Click Learn repetedly... I did a list of a hungred or so this way.

Assuming Tiger has the same capability I'd guess.

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Answer 5

jsd2

Level 5

6,245 points

Jun 26, 2008 3:10 AM in response to oxcart

If you look at an "en" file in TextEdit, the words seem to run together. However they have to be separated by something - how otherwise would the spellchecker know what a "word" is? if you instead look at the en file with [HexEdit|http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=9366] (freeware), you will see that each word is actually separated from the next by an invisible 00 byte (null). The Microsoft custom dictionary seems to be an ordinary textfile, using hex 0D 0A (CR/LF) for word separators. (All the 0s above are zeros, not capital-Os)

So it looks as if you could:
1) Make a copy (for safety) of the Microsoft custom dictionary
2) Open it with HexEdit
3 Find menu>Find and Replace
4 Find and replace all 0D 0A with 00 ( use "Matching: Hex" option)
4) Save the file as "en" in home/Library/Spelling/.

I haven't tried this, though.

jd

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Answer 6

oxcart Author

Level 1

94 points

Jul 10, 2008 3:14 AM in response to jsd2

BINGO! Followed the instructions and restarted (required).

Brilliant! Thank you so much, this has saved lots of trouble.

Mac Mail could do with an import option, lots of people must be in this position. It could also do with an ACL list for auto corrections. I use this for my own version of typing short hand as it expands long technical words from my own abbreviations.

Thanks again!

Free at last!

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Answer 7

BDAqua

Level 10

250,975 points

Jun 17, 2008 12:23 PM in response to oxcart

You first have to add one Spelling correction to it before it'll make the Folder & File.

Highlight a word in say Text Edit, right click>Spelling>Add.

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Answer 8

BDAqua

Level 10

250,975 points

Jun 17, 2008 1:15 AM in response to oxcart

Hi, I;m not on Tiger at the moment, but it appears to be a file that opens into Text Edit, in location...

/Users/nnnn/Library/Spelling/

Mine is simply called en. 😉

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