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Level 1

9 points

Pages not recognising British English

I have recently changed iMacs to a new 27". Have installed iWork and set Pages preference to British English in the Inspector.

That's been fine for two weeks. But I've just downloaded an update for Pages and it no longer recognises British English. I've tried creating new templates set to British English; going into the inspector for individual documents and deselecting then reselecting British English; I've gone to system preferences and reselected British English in 'Language and Text' - but none of these have corrected the problem. I've checked old docs created on my prior Mac in templates set to "British English" and these are now highlighting words such as 'programme' and 'colour' as being wrongly spelt.

Is there anything else I should try before I opt to reinstall iWork from scratch?

27" iMac i3,Intel MacBook, G5 iMac, iPhone 4, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Sep 15, 2010 12:09 AM

25 replies

Neil Myners Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 16, 2010 6:59 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Sorry Tom, completely glossed over the post. Will try that. Do I assume that I just drag these .aff and .dic files into the spelling folder in my library? Check British English everywhere etc. Log out and log back in again? (Will I need to remove the en_GB and LocalDictionary files that are already in this folder?)

I have noticed one strange thing purely by chance. Any British spelt word that ends a sentence and therefore followed by a fullstop is recognised as being spelt correctly.

fruhulda

Level 6

15,161 points

Sep 16, 2010 8:17 AM in response to Neil Myners

Of course you can have extra dictionaries. I do, but I think you should mend what once did work or should work.
For how long have you had this new iMac? If it fairly recently you could get help from AppleCare.
Have you updated this iMac to 10.6.4 yourself? If so did you use the Combo update.

What I am not sure of if you can use your 10.6 ... DVD and install over you existing one without loosing anything. When I updated from Leopard to Snow Leopard that was possible to do so. Maybe someone in the Snow Leopard forum has experience of this.

Neil Myners Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 16, 2010 8:26 AM in response to fruhulda

Have added the suggested dictionary but that doesn't appear to have solve it either.

The iMac is two weeks old. I've not updated Snow Leopard myself - it is as it was bought. British English was fine until earlier this week when there were several software updates showing, of which the only one I can remember that appeared as though it might affect any language issues was iWork updates. It was when I next opened Pages that the problem was noticed. I think I'll resort to Applecare. Thanks for your help

fruhulda

Level 6

15,161 points

Sep 16, 2010 11:40 AM in response to Neil Myners

You are welcome. Come back and tell us what had to be done to solve your problem.

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,012 points

Sep 16, 2010 12:34 PM in response to Neil Myners

Have added the suggested dictionary but that doesn't appear to have solve it either.

Did you add the dictionary with OED in its name? And then did you go to Inspector > Text > More > Language and select "English (Library)"?

sambeau

Level 1

0 points

Sep 26, 2010 9:24 AM in response to Neil Myners

OK - I've solved this!

To make your Mac use the British English dictionary, follow the instructions in this thread about changing your default language in the System Preferences. Put British English at the top and you will have solved this problem for NEW Pages documents.

To solve this for OLD PAges documents (that were created with American English as the default you have to also set EVERY WORD to be British English, too. So select all, in the Inspector go to Text panel > More Tab > Language Combi-box and set it to British English.

This is quite a feature, really - it allows you to include words form more than one language in the same document and have them checked by the relevant dictionary!

(or maybe it's a little over-engineered)

Either way - there's the solution. Or at least - this is how I solved it for me 🙂

fruhulda

Level 6

15,161 points

Sep 26, 2010 11:57 AM in response to sambeau

sambeau wrote:
To make your Mac use the British English dictionary, follow the instructions in this thread about changing your default language in the System Preferences. Put British English at the top and you will have solved this problem for NEW Pages documents.

You forgot to say that one has to log out and in again for it to take effect.

Neil Myners Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 27, 2010 1:46 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Tom, I meant to have posted a thank you. The OED library works great in Pages, which is my main concern. I still can't get real English in Mail, Stickies or Text Edit. These still show American spellings. But my immediate problem is solved - the others are inconsequential in comparison. So thanks for your advice (and everyone else who offered solutions on this thread). I still don't know what the actual problem is as everything is set for British English in terms of spelling, text and keyboard - but at least it's now sorted in Pages.

Neil Myners Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 27, 2010 2:05 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

... and as if by magic - I've now sorted the spelling in Mail, Text Edit and Stickies. For some reason it didn't like me just logging out after changing the Spelling menu to 'English (Library)' under the text preference in System Preferences. I tried the same trick I use when a USB external drive won't mount if it's been accidentally removed or unplugged. Sounds bizarre but I completely power down the Mac and remove the plug from the wall socket for about 30" and when I turn everything on again it recognizes the drive. Tried that with this language issue - and was surprised to find it worked!

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,012 points

Sep 27, 2010 2:20 PM in response to Neil Myners

Good news, thanks for the feedback!

Pages not recognising British English