Setting Mac Word to use GB Dictionary

Hi there,

I’m having lot’s of problems setting the Word dictionary to UK English. I have seen several posts on this subject on the forum and yet there is no definitive solution or none of the solutions described have worked for me.

I have selected British English as default in the system preferences panel (although I don’t think this is necessary), and I have selected en_GB.dic as my (only) option in Word preferences. I also have British English as my keyboard.

But if I type, for example, organize, it doesn’t change it to the UK spelling of organise. Color, counselor as further examples are accepted as correct and many other words.

I think that even though I have the GB dictionary selected, it is either;

• not checking words against that dictionary,
• checking words against that dictionary but the dictionary is US and not GB, or,
• the document itself is not set up as UK language.

Is there a way to check the language of the document (as in MS Word where the document language appears at the bottom left)? I have used the instructions from an apple post somewhere about setting up a style key to use UK-English but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t - I’m not sure why. The easiest solution would be to have the GB dictionary as default!

I have also noticed that when I use TextEdit, any words I spell using US English are automatically changed to British English which is exactly what I’m after in Mac Word.

I tried to find a GB dictionary I could download and a Wiki link I found is not available and I couldn’t find anything more on this so I reached a dead end on that.

Is there a way to maybe delete the US dictionary or edit it manually with British English spelling (worth the trouble to solve this problem!!) or maybe fool the Mac by replacing the US dictionary with another UK dictionary or the same one I must already have on my Mac?

Thanks,

Maz