dictionary changes to French (Word 2003 (11.6359) SP1)

[gglmi]

I have a document whose dictionary changes from English to French whenever I run a spellcheck. I change the default back to English, run spellcheck again, French again. HELP... very frustrating.

TIA,
gg

[HansV]

Check the definition of the Normal style:
- Select Format | Styles and Formatting...
- Right-click Normal and sleect Modify from the popup menu.
- Select Format > Language.

This problem can also occur when the language setting in Windows has changed, but then it would affect other documents too, so that seems less probable.

[gglmi]

OK, followed your directions and the dialog box has English (US) on top, checked, with double underline after it. If I scroll down the list of other languages, all the Englishes, all the Frenches, and all the Spanishes are checked also. What is happening when I run spellcheck is the default seems to be changing to French.

I don't know how to uncheck a language or prevent it from becoming the default. Could it be that the text was cut and pasted from a document where French was the default dictionary???

TIA,
gg

[HansV]

The check marks only mean that the language is available for spell checking on your PC, not that the document is set to that language. The US English version of Word comes with English, French and Spanish spell checking.

You could try this:
- Select the entire document (Ctrl+A)
- Select Tools | Language | Set Language...
- Make sure that the check box "Automatically detect language" is clear.
- Click OK.

Is this problem really limited to one document, or does it happen in other documents too? If it is one document, you could try copying everything except the last character (always a paragraph mark) into a new document. If you wish, you can also post (a sanitized copy of) the document, so that other Loungers can investigate it.

[gglmi]

I think that I fixed it. The spellcheck was stopping in footnote text and changing to the French dictionary. I copied the footnote text from the problem file to a blank document and pasted special as unformatted text. I deleted the footnote in the problem file then recreated it, again pasting special as unformatted text into the footnote. Now when I ran the spell check, it stayed English. YEAH.

Thanks for all your help. For whatever reason when the citation was pasted in (I assume it was, anyway) it brought the French language designation in with it (even though none of the words were French). Go figure??!!??

gg

[HansV]

Glad you were able to solve it.

[jscher2000]

I wonder whether it reflects the "last checked text" in the document as a matter of course? Would be interesting to go back and insert a later footnote, change its language to English (US) just in case it had some other language, insert a misspelled word, and see whether that "corrects" the problem.

[gglmi]

Interesting... don't have time to experiment now as I spent a lot of time "playing" with this document this AM and must get the work out by EOB today. <img src=/S/dizzy.gif border=0 alt=dizzy width=15 height=15>

Ain't Word grand at times!!

gg

[gglmi]

Thanks, me too! Thanks for your help in thinking through the process.
gg