Using Spellcheck in NeoOffice

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NeoOffice/J activates the language tools (spell check, thesaurus, etc.) for the language that is set as the default in the System Preferences when you launch NeoOffice/J, provided you have the appropriate language pack installed.

Selecting the Dictionary to be Used in a Document or Section

NeoOffice/J does not activate all available dictionaries because of a crippling bug in the OpenOffice.org code which causes tremendous slowdowns when more than one or two dictionaries are activated. By default, NeoOffice/J uses only the dictionary for your default language.

If you have multiple languages and dictionaries enabled, you can control which dictionary is used by setting "Default languages for documents" in Preferences… -> Language Settings -> Languages (either for all new documents, or for the current document only with the appropriate checkbox), or by setting the language of a particular section of text via the Format -> Character options.

Sometimes this process gets convoluted; there is a trinity thread that attempts to walk through troubleshooting why language (and thus dictionary) settings "don't stick" sometimes.

Enabling Additional Dictionaries (Manual Override)

If you wish to keep your system language set for one language and use a different or additional language in NeoOffice/J's language tools, you can manually override the enabled dictionaries.

  • Navigate to the <your_username>/Library/NeoOfficeJ-1.1/user/wordbook folder
  • Open the dictionary.lst file in a text editor, e.g., TextEdit
  • Uncomment (remove the # character) from the beginning of the lines referencing the dictionary, hyphenation, and thesaurus files for your language and locale
e.g., to enable French-France dictionaries, remove the # character from the lines 
 # DICT fr FR fr_FR
 # HYPH fr FR fr_FR
 # THES fr FR fr_FR
  • If the entries are not present and you have installed the appropriate language pack (or you are using one of the 12 langauges enabled in the standard NeoOffice/J download), add the appropriate entries to the <your_username>/Library/NeoOfficeJ-1.1/user/wordbook/dictionary.lst file.
  • Save the file, making sure to save as "plain text"
  • Launch NeoOffice/J; be sure to set the language of each section of text appropriately or spell-check will not work.


N.B. These manual instructions have yet to be verified; in fact, there are two competing sets of instructions floating around, [1] and [2].

An alternative set of instructions calls for editing the /Applications/NeoOfficeJ.app/Contents/share/dict/ooo/dictionary.lst file instead and uncommenting the applicable entries. Restart NeoOffice/J after editing, and then you should be able to activate the uncommented dictionary. Note that this file will be replaced each time you (re)install NeoOffice/J, whereas the dictionary.lst in your Library folder will persist between installs.

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