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

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.

iMichele wrote:

 

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.

This is a known bug since Snow Leopard was introduced. It seems some have forgotten about it. Keep the Dictionary open and do the Ctlr + click again and it will work. I have added the Dictionary to those applications that will open when I start/log on to my computer. System Preferences > Accounts > Start objects > click on + sign and find the application you want to add.

You can also remind Apple that the problem exists by using this link http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html 

or the one in your Pages Pages menu > Provide Pages feedback

Nope.  Even with the Dictionary open, when I control-click on a word and select "Look up in Dictionary and Thesaurus" from "Writing Tools" nothing happens.  I'm using OSX Lion.

I'm sorry:  It's not clear what you mean about adding the Dictionary to login items.

When you say nothing happens do you mean that the dictionary field doesn't get the word pasted in or do you mean the Dictionary doesn't find the word?

If you add an application, lets say the Dictionary, in the Accounts > log in items (is that what it is called ?) the application will automatically open when you log in to your account and stays open until you quit it.

I've been using CTRL+CMD+D for a long time. Since I upgraded both my mac pro 2008 and my macbook pro 2010 from SL to Lion, a new bug has appeared: The contextual dictionary pops up but the the popup hangs in place when you click elsewhere on the document. Sometimes the application crashes. This only happens with Pages '09 and Papers.app (a third party application). Safari, Preview and Mail behave well. Also, the problem doesn't occur at all with the same apps on a recently purchased (Spring 2011) macbook air, relatively clean (no previous OS installed) and free of too many 3rd party apps. No idea what's causing the problem on the Macbook pro and on the Mac Pro.

Here it behave flawlessly. I wish to add that I installed the system on a blank HD.

May you try to test how it behave when used from an other user account ?

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France)  lundi 14 janvier 2011 19:02:04

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 4 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2

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

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

Bien vu Yvan and thanks! Indeed the dictionary behaves well for a newly created user. It's still puzzling what could cause the hanging behavior for a single user account. Any thoughts?

Quit Pages

Move the preferences file :

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

to the Desktop

Restart Pages which will create a new preferences file.

Maybe the 'old' one is corrupted.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France)  lundi 14 janvier 2011 20:52:52

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 4 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2

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

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

I moved all the iWork plists out of the Library folders and restarted but that did not fix the problem.

I have some 3rd party apps for which the dictionary works perfectly well, e.g TexShop

Did you removed really those from your User account, not those from the main Library folder ?

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France)  lundi 14 janvier 2011 21:35:20

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 4 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2

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

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

Yes, I moved all the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork* files out of the way but that didn't help unfortunately.

OK

Try to move to the Desktop these ones :

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.iWork.fonts

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.iWork.Pages

As far as I know they are the unique other files related to Pages in your account.

CAUTION : I didn't wrote "delete these ones".

I know that the fonts cache will be rebuild if you delete it

but I don't know if the other one would be.

Time to sleep. I will be back tomorrow.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France)  lundi 14 janvier 2011 22:27:26

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 4 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2

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

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

ok, I tried that too. In fact I even tried moving all the ~/Library/*/*Dictionary* out of the way and even the ByHost/*/*iWork* to no avail.

By the way both ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.iWork.Pages and com.apple.iwork.fonts were recreated after launching Pages.app.

Here is one detail that might be helpful to troubleshoot might pb. The dictionary pops up but as soon as I click somewhere else in the document, what happens is that the document gets sent back and is no longer the current window index. For example I tried opening 3 documents and looking for a word on document 1. After looking up the word on doc 1 if I click anywhere on doc1 the popup and doc1 disappear in the back, and doc2 becomes the current window. Then I select doc 1 to be the current window, the popup is still stuck to it.

Same problem for me.  I have reinstalled OS X Lion and iWork 09.  Did all system updates.  Still can't get dictionary or thesaurus to come up by right clicking a word>writing tools>look up in dictionary and thesaurus. Dictonary works fine in texedit, guest account, and in dashboard.

I am having the exact same problem since upgrading to Lion. Actually both problems.

Cmd, CTRL D opens to a dictionary, thesaurus sheet that will not close.

I have to close the document to make it go away. 

Edit, Writing tools, Look up in Dictionary and Thesaurus, Yields no response.

This is a bug for sure in Pages.