Pages '09 no longer will access dictionary/thesaurus in "writing tools"

Question

Pages '09 no longer will access dictionary/thesaurus in "writing tools"

I got Pages from the App Store last month. I got the upgrade just before Lion launched. I installed Lion. All worked fine til yesterday. Then Pages stopped accessing the dictionary/thesaurus in "Writing Tools." Then I had quite a few crashes -- some other settings like my Desktop changed. I can boot up and didn't lose any data that I know of. Any suggestions about linking the dictionary/thesaurus to writing tools as it was meant to? Thanks!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 26, 2011 11:17 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Dale Gillard

Level 5

4,366 points

Jul 27, 2011 7:28 AM in response to robertfromhigh point

I'm not sure what you mean by "Pages stopped accessing the dictionary/thesaurus in Writing Tools". Do you mean that the menu Edit > Writing Tools > Look Up in Dictionary and Thesaurus is no longer available?

If so, make sure you've got Pages in the correct folder on your hard drive. It should be in the /Applications/iWork '09 folder. If it's not, move it back.

If this isn't the cause the simplest solution is to delete your iWork '09 folder and download it again from the Mac App Store. You can download deleted apps from the Mac App Store by clicking on the Purchases icon in the toolbar, locating the app and clicking the INSTALL button. This should reinstall the latest version of Pages on your Mac and fix the problem.

Hope this helps.

Dale

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Answer 2

Jul 27, 2011 8:07 AM in response to Dale Gillard

I had downloaded Pages alone, not iWork, so it was in the Applications folder.

The problem, more specificially this time, was that the menu Edit > Writing tools > Look up in dictionary and Thesaurus appeared but nothing happened when I clicked on that option. It had worked both in Snow Leopard and the first 5 days of using Lion. The other wrting tools do work.

I did re-download Pages as you suggested -- sounds like a great easy way around the problem.

However the same problem remains. That leads me to believe perhaps Lion was was corrupted in a crash, or needs some kind of fix.

Does that mean I have to re-install Lion? That would take a long time but would be worth it if it works better and is more stable this time.

Thanks Dale, I appreciate your knowledge and help.

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Answer 3

Jul 27, 2011 2:09 PM in response to robertfromhigh point

I did re-install Lion as well as Pages. That fixed the crash problem, but I still can't access the Dictionary & Thesaurus in Writing Tools and can't find a preference setting to change that might help.

Any suggestions?

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Answer 4

Jul 27, 2011 3:01 PM in response to robertfromhigh point

The menu Edit > Writing tools > Look up in dictionary and Thesaurus uses Lion's Dictionary app. Can you check if this is in your /Applications folder? Thanks.

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Answer 5

Jul 27, 2011 3:15 PM in response to Dale Gillard

Yes the Dictionary App is in the Applications Folder. It's Icon is a brick-colored book with an A and a on it and Dictionary and Thesaurus on top. I can drag a word to this Dictionary icon from Pages, but it doesn't have all the "replace" features that were working before.

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Answer 6

Jul 28, 2011 6:13 AM in response to robertfromhigh point

Thanks for checking the Dictionary app was in place.

> I can drag a word to this Dictionary icon from Pages,

> but it doesn't have all the "replace" features that were working before.

If I've understood you correctly, I can't do this either. That is, I can't choose text in the Dictionary app to replace text in a Pages document.

Maybe I'm not understanding you as this sounds like Find & Replace feature. Perhaps you could give us an example of what you're trying to do so I can better what's happening?

Thanks.

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Answer 7

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,807 points

Jul 28, 2011 6:53 AM in response to robertfromhigh point

Hello

May you try to run Pages from an other user account ?

If it behave well in such case, we would know that the culprit is in your original account.

It would be intetesting to :

quit Pages

drag its two preferences files :

<startupVolume>:Users:<yourAccount>:Library:Preferences:com.apple.iWork.Pages.pl ist

<startupVolume>:Users:<yourAccount>:Library:Preferences:com.apple.iWork.Pages.LSSharedFileList.plist

on the Desktop

Then restart the app.

It will built new preferences files and with a bit of luck everything will work OK.

If third party extensions are installed on your machine (betterTouch for instance) try to disable them.

There was a BTT update two or three days ago but maybe they didn't get rid of every oddities.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) jeudi 28 juillet 2011 15:53:25

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 4 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.0

My iDisk is : <http://public.me.com/koenigyvan>

Please : Search for questions similar to your own before submitting them to the community

To be the AW6 successor, iWork MUST integrate a TRUE DB, not a list organizer !

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Answer 8

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,848 points

Jul 28, 2011 6:58 AM in response to robertfromhigh point

robertfromhigh point wrote:

it doesn't have all the "replace" features that were working before.

That sounds like you are talking about the spell checking system, which is totally separate from Dictionary/Thesaurus.

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Answer 9

Jul 28, 2011 7:57 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks to all of you.

I just tried finding an older version of Pages (I got it from the App store in late May) in Time machine and copying it to my desktop. It worked fine when I got it but I still have the same problem using it jut now. To be perfectly clear for all of you, the problem is:

In Pages, If I highlight a word in a word processing document, then double click on it a list of options appears in a box, the last option is:

Writing tools -- if I click on that, the first option is "Look up in Dictionary and Thesaurus"

The problem is: if I click on "Look up in Dictionary and Thesaurus" nothing happens. The other options, like Goodle, Wikipedia, Spotlight, and Statistics work as they're supposed to.

,

I do not have this problem in Apple Mail. When I do the steps above, the dictionary that used to work in Pages, with all its helpful options, works fine.

This leads me to believe that somehow there is a setting which has been corrupted or changed.

I did have a major Lion crash on Monday morning, right after this problem began. I figured it would be fixed by turning the computer off, then on again, but it wouldn't boot up until I held down Command-shift-S while I pressed the on button. Then white writing on a black background came up. At the bottom, it said something like "To boot write exit." I typed exit and after a few more lines were written buy the computer, the computer booted, but would not boot again by itself without doing this. Yesterday I re-installed Lion and was impressed that it went well. The computer boots normally again. But I still have this Pages/built-in Dictionary & Thesaurus not working problem.

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Answer 10

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,807 points

Jul 28, 2011 8:13 AM in response to robertfromhigh point

Did you applied what I wrote about the preferences files ?

If I understand well, you tried to insert an other copy of Pages and to reinstall the system on itself.

If I am right, the preferences were not changed in both processes so if they are the wrongdoerrs, it's logicall that the problem continue to strike.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) jeudi 28 juillet 2011 17:12:49

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 4 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.0

My iDisk is : <http://public.me.com/koenigyvan>

Please : Search for questions similar to your own before submitting them to the community

To be the AW6 successor, iWork MUST integrate a TRUE DB, not a list organizer !

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Answer 11

Jul 28, 2011 8:17 AM in response to KOENIG Yvan

Thank you, Koenig. I will try it later today and report back. Right now, I have to write a document with Pages that was due...yesterday. Your assessment of the problem and suggested solution do indeed sound promising.

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Answer 12

Simon UK

Level 1

4 points

Jul 28, 2011 3:21 PM in response to robertfromhigh point

I have the same problem.

I am using Lion, pages 09.

Click on a word, chose Look up in Dictionary and Thesaurus, nothing happens 😟

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Answer 13

Sep 28, 2011 11:49 AM in response to Simon UK

CONTROL+COMMAND+D is the solution. Make sure your mouse is hovering over the word. Selecting it will not produce the result you want if your mouse has moved since you selected it, oddly.

Also, oddly, the contextual menu (right click, or control click) does not produce the popup menu. But control command d does. who'd a thought? still a bug i hope apple fixes. it's silly to have a menu item nonfunctional. But then Lion has so many bugs i can't get into it right now. But as a legacy Apple user and onetime evangelist, i'm pretty freaked out. not that i'd ever switch, but it's very disappointing.

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Answer 14

Sep 28, 2011 4:33 PM in response to Manifestao

Thank you, that does indeed work, just right.

A friend of mine who works for Apple suggested that a double-tap on the touchpad with 3 fingers when a word is highlighted would do it too, and it does.

Too bad it's not so simple, but at least we know 2 work-arounds.

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Answer 15

iMichele

Level 1

0 points

Oct 30, 2011 5:53 AM in response to robertfromhigh point

CONTROL+COMMAND+D and double tapping on the touchpad with 3 fingers bring up the OSX Lion system-wide dictionary, not the Dictionary App which allows you to search for and select alternative words.

I'm having the same problem on my MacBook Pro. When I Control-click on a word and select "Look up in Dictionary and Thesaurus" from "Writing Tools" nothing happens.

Not very Apple.

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