Comments on: MacMost Now 164: Spell Check in Mac OS X Applications

By: Gary Rosenzweig

Gary Rosenzweig — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:14:31 +0000

I don’t think every application has its own dictionary. But some do. Microsoft Word, for instance, doesn’t use the system dictionary. There’s not much you can do about that. Just have to add it again.

By: JohnT

JohnT — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:13:12 +0000

I have noticed every MAC application has it own dictionary, when I add custom words or abbreviations to one it is not available in other applications. Is it possible to have one dictionary for all MAC applications?

By: Gary Rosenzweig

Gary Rosenzweig — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:11:09 +0000

Unlearning is very easy. Just type the word in TextEdit or something else that uses autocorrect. Then Control+click it and select “unlearn.”

By: LoboSolo

LoboSolo — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:00:07 +0000

Same for me in 10.7.2 Lion … I don’t see an option to unlearn. Thanks to the inertia scrolling and bouncing, I accidentally entered a misspelled into the wordbook … Now I’m trying to figure out how to undo the mistake!

Like you, I need full control of the wordbooks.

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 23:20:35 +0000

Also, I with PC, I used to be able to edit entire user dictionaries of my choice. As a translator, I need control of my dictionaries. Why can’t I just open a text file of the learned words, so I can browse through them and delete ones that I no longer want in my user dictionary?

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 23:17:00 +0000

I’m using an iMax with Snow Leopard v. 10.6.8, whose instructions for deleting words erroneously saved to the dictionary tell me to control+click the word and then click “unlearn word.” I don’t get the option to do so from the pop-up menu. It also says I can go to the shortcut menu, but I can find no such menu. What’s up with that!?

By: Gary Rosenzweig

Gary Rosenzweig — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 19:15:13 +0000

Select the red underlined word. Then choose Edit, Spelling and Grammar, Show Spelling and Grammar. The Spelling and Grammar window pops up. There, you can move through the words in your message. The current word should be shown in there. You can use the Learn button in this window to teach spell checker your word.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 17:06:03 +0000

In Mail, let’s say I want the spellchecker to add a word (perhaps a name, or simply a word I’ve created) to its database, like Word might, so that I don’t have to see the annoying red underlined “warning” every time I type those words in the future?

Love your site and your videos and all you contribute! Thanks.

By: Gary Rosenzweig

Gary Rosenzweig — Thu, 26 May 2011 21:06:04 +0000

Perhaps you turned it off. Not sure which application you are using, but for instance, if you are using Safari then look in Edit, Spelling and Grammar for settings.

By: Yohannes

Yohannes — Thu, 26 May 2011 21:00:37 +0000

I have macbookpro 11, my spell check stop working, I can type email or facebook the spell check it not working; how do fix that?
please help
Thanks a lot!

By: Rick Carter

Rick Carter — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 18:22:06 +0000

Sometimes I get the squiggly red line and “the word was not found in the spelling dictionary” but the “Learn” option is not there as it is for 95% of the cases. Anyone have any idea what might be causing this? Right now, I’m playing with Stickies with a few tech terms and company names, and the name “Adesso” is doing this for me. Can someone try putting that into a Stickies or other Mac spell-checked document, and getting the squiggly and right-clicking and see if it’s consistent that the same words fail the same way for everyone?

By: Gary Rosenzweig

Gary Rosenzweig — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 16:34:18 +0000

I don’t think there is any way you can train the system spell check to suggest words. But you can use text substitutions for something similar:
http://macmost.com/using-text-substitutions-in-snow-leopard.html

By: A.Riedel

A.Riedel — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 13:48:56 +0000

Hi, I have a problem when writing in German, that certain words containing “umlaute” such as “ü” are not auto-corrected or will not come up as an option in the suggested alternative words. For instance: I use an English Keyboard and use the spelling of fuer for “für”. “fuer” will be underlined, but it will not come up as a suggestion. I then have to manually substitute the letters ue with ü, but will be given no option to get the system to “learn” the spelling. If I type the word correctly as “für”, there will be no underlining, so I suspect that the word is actually included in the spell checker, but will not come up as an option in the list of suggested words to correct the spelling manually.
How can I include a word into the list of suggestions when manually spell checking?
PS: Most other words with Umlaut “ü” or “ö” or “ä” will come up when highlighting the word and right clicking.

By: Gary Rosenzweig

Gary Rosenzweig — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:21:25 +0000

When in Mail, and composing a message, what does it read when you go to Edit, Spelling and Grammar, Check Spelling?

By: Dayna

Dayna — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 03:58:53 +0000

HI! My mac mail is not spell checking while I type even though I have that checked in preferences. Spell check works in other applications but not in mail…any ideas?
thanks!

By: Gary Rosenzweig

Gary Rosenzweig — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 05:20:03 +0000

Ah, if you are using 10.4.11 (Tiger) then you have a much older version of the Mac apps, which include TextEdit.

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 05:14:09 +0000

Nope, doesn’t come up as an option when I do that.

I tried right-clicking and control-clicking. No “unlearn.”

I have OSX 10.4.11.

By: Gary Rosenzweig

Gary Rosenzweig — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:39:36 +0000

In Snow Leopard you can choose “automatic by language” as the language and spell check multiple languages without switching. You can choose which languages to use in the System Prefs. Not sure how well it works, though. You can use Command+: in Apple apps to bring up the spelling controls rather than using the menu bar.

By: José María

José María — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:05:32 +0000

Hello!

I constantly write documents using several different languages, and I find very cumbersome to have to go to the Edit –> Spelling –> Spelling menu and change the language everytime I type a new piece of text. Is there some kind of keyboard shortcut that will allow me to quickly cycle through the options available at the spell-checker and change the language?

Many thanks in advance!

By: rosenz

rosenz — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:17:34 +0000

Type he word into TextEdit or find it in a document. Select it. Ctrl+Click on it and select “Unlearn Spelling.”

By: Bill

Bill — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:03:16 +0000

I have accidentally added several words that are not correct to the dictionary. How do I edit the dictionary to remove the wrong words? I cannot find the spelling folder in my library.

By: rosenz

rosenz — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:27:14 +0000

It sounds like you installed languages inside of Firefox, which has its own system. You need to install the languages for Mac OS X for them to appear everywhere else. Not exactly sure where these come from for spell check, but I bet if you install them from your Mac OS X install disk that will work.

By: Marek Bogacki Staszkiewicz

Marek Bogacki Staszkiewicz — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:22:21 +0000

I can only find the other languages menu pop-up in Firefox – for which I downloaded additional dictionaries – but not in Text Edit for example, at all. I run Leopard on Intel Mac. Do I need to install these dictionaries somewhere else?

By: Will

Will — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 22:26:53 +0000

Great, this is the one I was having the most problems with. Thanks a lot.

By: rosenz

rosenz — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:59:17 +0000

Max: Absolutely. At the bottom of the standard spell check panel (shown in the video) there is a pop-up menu for language. You can switch between languages, or choose multilingual.

By: Max

Max — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:17:27 +0000

Hi! Any hint how I can change the language of the spell check? I speak german, english and french and thus write texts in different languages. Thanks!