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

Hi Fruhulda, I followed Yvan Koenig's step by step suggestions and quit Pages before moving the plist file. Should I not have?

As a sidenote, let me remind that if the dictionary appears and disappears correctly in Pages for a newly created user. I'm contemplating the solution of moving all my stuff to a new user account but I'd rather not since it is a really laborious process.

I apologize but when a problem strikes in an user account and doesn't in an other account on the same machine, the problem is not an application one.

There is something wrong in the original account.

Reinstalling Lion on itself or reinstalling iWork without removing all the related files is useless in such case because the offending item isn't necessarily replaced in the two operations.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 15 janvier 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

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

Hello

Moving the plist after quitting pages is good practice.

I guess that Fruhulda asked to be sure that you behaved this way.

I'm really puzzled because I don't guess which file may be the wrongdoer in your user account.

In such case, I backup the HD with Time Machine or with Carbon Copy Cloner.

I erase the HD's contents

reinstall a clean system

use Apple's Migration Assistant to restore old documents.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 15 janvier 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

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

Of course, that is why I asked.

- mv com.apple.iWork.Pages.* ~/Desktop

- quit Pages

- reopen

==> same problem

Quit Pages first. Then move/delete the plist file

Yes, of course. That's what i did in the first place and it hadn't worked.

I don't think that my problem is related to the Pages plist files. I think that it's related to which frameworks are linked at launch time. This problem might only occur to those who upgraded from SL. If I had the source code, I would recompile Pages against the 10.7.2 libraries and that would probably fix it.

I had the exact same problem with a 3rd-party application (Papers.app). I mentioned that to the authors of the software and we noticed that the problem went away after they recompiled against the 10.7.xx libraries.

I suspect that some deprecated function from an older framework gets called. Like Yvan Koenig, I'm puzzled as to why this doesn't affect new users on the same machine.

Anyway, if I find a fix, I'll post it here since I'm apparently not the only one having this issue.

I'm puzzled but I disagree with you.

Pages 4.1 behave well on my machine under 10.6.8 and under 10.7.2.

If I remember well, the updater 9.1 changed the Frameworks stored in :

Macintosh HD:Library:Application Support:iWork '09:Frameworks:

under 10.6.8 as well as under 10.7.2.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 15 janvier 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

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

I had once a problem in Pages but I can't remember if it had to do the Dictionary. It was serious problem enough and no other remedy helped so I uninstall and reinstalled iWork. That solved my problem. It shouldn't be a problem of this kind as Pages worked fine in the other account but still it might help. It doesn't harm as far as I know.

To uninstall correctly iWork, go to Yvans iDisk :

<http://public.me.com/koenigyvan>

Download :

For_iWork:iWork '09:uninstall iWork '09.zip

Expand the archive and run the script.

Restart the computer and instal iwork again and don't forget to do the updated too.

I started this thread orignally because I thought it was a Pages issue. I have come to believe it is a Dictionary issue. I have reintsalled iWork several times and reinstalled Lion once, but neither has fixed my problem.

The reason I believe my problem is the Dictionary is because when I try to open the Dictionary App from Launchpad nothiing happens. On my iMac at my house when I open the Dictionary App it actually opens and I can use the dictionary.

When I am in Pages, using <control> <command> <D> while the cursor is on a word will open the dictionary. However, right clicking the mouse and clicking writing tools>Look up in Dictionary and Thesaurus does nothing.

I would really like to get this fixed.

You may try to remove the three preferences files related to the Dictionary but, doing that will remove links which you may installed for third party dictionaries.

The files are :

Macintosh HD:Users:yvankoenig:Library:Preferences:com.apple.Dictionary.plist

Macintosh HD:Users:yvankoenig:Library:Preferences:com.apple.Dictionary.plist.lockfile

Macintosh HD:Users:yvankoenig:Library:Preferences:com.apple.DictionaryServices.plist

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 15 janvier 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

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

When right clicking on a word in Pages will get Dictionary to open but as there is a bug in Pages it will not at the same time add the word. It is a bug. You have to right click again on the word and it will be looked up. Apple has known this since the beginning of Pages 09. I did report it but it hasn't been corrected.

Hello

I have some difficulties to name a bugguy feature one which behave flawlessly on the machines which I know.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 15 janvier 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

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

I agree with Yvan that it may not be called a "Pages" bug at this point. However it might still be a bug, e.g from the Lion Upgrade Assistant.

After making some tests on a token custom app in xcode I found that compiling against 10.6 leads to leaks which eventually crash the test application on repeated calls to the dictionary. I ran both my custom app and Pages in the Instruments.app to count the leaks and it behaves just the same. When the custom app is built against 10.7 then things behave perfectly well.

Interestingly, the dictionary works well with any Intel-only app on my system, whether they are 32 or 64 bit apps (e.g Grapher is 32bit and it works). However it doesn't work with any of the Universal app under my user account, e.g iTunes 10.5.2.