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jasoniv Author

Level 1

5 points

ios7 dictionary management bugs?

I like the new dictionaries in ios7. However they seem to behave unexpectedly:

- open a Japanese book in iBooks

- select a word

- choose Define

- get "No definition found"

- click Manage

- all the dictionaries have a "cloud with arrow" icon next to them, which I assume means that the dictionary data need to be downloaded from the cloud

- click the "cloud with arrow" icon next to "Japanese-English", it turns into an "x" icon

- go back

- Done (back to the book)

- select the word again

- choose Define

- now I get dictionary entries

This is good. But I'm not online, so where did the dictionary data come from? It certainly wasn't downloaded from anywhere. That's one unexpected thing.

The other thing is that dictionaries seem to randomly disappear, so I often need to keep following the steps above to re-add the "Japanese-English" dictionary (for example). It seems impossible to "permanently" add a dictionary.

Finally, I tried clicking the "cloud with arrow" icon while I was online, to see what would happen. This time a circular progress icon appeared, and it took several minutes to complete -- so it seemed to be downloading data for the Japanese-English dictionary. But the next day, the Japanese-English dictionary was gone again.

How can a dictionary be enabled permanently? And why does it seem to be unnecessary to download dictionary data?

iPod touch, iOS 7

Posted on Oct 3, 2013 8:50 AM

Top-ranking reply

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,464 points

Posted on Oct 3, 2013 9:29 AM

There have been other reports of disappearing dictionaries. I think all you can do is report this to Apple for them to fix:

http://www.apple.com/feedback

It may be that some dictionaries have to be downloaded and some are already present but not activated. I suppose you could test them all when you had no wifi connection to see if that is correct...

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46 replies

dottage

Level 1

4 points

Sep 22, 2016 10:21 AM in response to sighing over tech support

Recent (Summer 2016) used purchase of iPhone 4 running 7.1.2 with same trouble. In my case adding dictionaries from Safari or Chrome did not work, but adding in "Notes" was successful. So for us:

1. Go to Notes, open new and type any word

2. Select your word, then "Define"

3. On blank definitions page, select "Manage"

4. Next page select desired Dictionary and wait for the circled "x"

5. Select "Dictionary" to return to definitions page

6. Select "Done"

When I did this the first time, returning to the definitions page after loading a dictionary still only presented a blank page. But starting fresh from "Notes" or any other app is fine. Also rebooted to make sure, and we're still good to go.

ios7 dictionary management bugs?