I am using Word 97 on a windows XP professional system. I
want to be able to spell check documents in French and
German but do not know how to go about it or what I need
to buy/download to make it happen.
Will I need to have a separate dictionary for each
language and pick the on I am using at the time or can I
get a multi-lingual dictionary?
I don't believe there's a multilingual dictionary installed with Word;
but if you Google <"MS Word" +"multilingual dictionary"> you will
find that there are some multilingual dictionaries available - for a
price, of course! No idea how well any of them might work - nor if
they are for Mac or Windows.
If French and German text are not included in the *same* document,
setting the language for each document (Tools->Language->Set Language)
and then selecting the appropriate dictionary
(Tools->Options->Spelling and Grammar. Click "Dictionaries" then
select the appropriate "Language" from the dropdown) might do the
trick.
If, however, each document contains more than one language you would
need to repeat the above process for each language, then run your
spell-check on text you select in that language. If you need to do
this quite frequently (and/or if your document is lengthy and contains
several language changes), you might want to consider creating a macro
for each language change to shorten the process.
Later versions of Word (at least those beyond Word 2000) may be more
accommodating - and one of the gurus here may have a more elegant
solution! But the above should work!
hro
