Supplementing Spell Checker
(All MS Office Applications)
Spell Checker is a great addition to MS Office. Several dictionaries (or
rather, a single dictionary for each of many languages and dialects) come with
Office, but they can’t include all of the job-specific or location-specific
words we use. For instance, one common problem is remembering how to spell the
last names of our colleagues and contacts. In this issue we’ll look at how to
export all of the Last names (surnames) from the Contacts folder in Outlook into
a supplemental dictionary. Using this technique, you may want to create other
supplemental dictionaries from database dumps of your company’s product names,
lists of component parts or maybe mutual fund names from a web page listing.
Create The New Dictionary
Go to Outlook and display your Contacts. From the main menu bar click on
File, and then Import and Export… You’ll get the Import and Export Wizard. (Note:
If this feature is not installed on your machine, you’ll need the Office
CD-ROMs or an IT person to install it for you.)
From here, indicate that you want to Export to a file, then click Next.
Create an Excel file as it’s an easy type to work with. Other file types
export quote marks around every entry and it’s really a mess.
Choose only the Contacts folder from the next screen that appears and with
the one after that, create a file on your Desktop called surnames.xls.
The next screen you see will allow you to Map Custom Fields… We want to do
this because custom dictionaries only allow one entry per line.
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Click Map Custom Fields…
and then click Clear Map to remove all of the current fields.
The only field we want is last name under the Name heading. Drag Last Name
from the left list to the right list then click OK. Now click Finish to complete
the wizard.
Go to your Desktop and open the file surnames.xls. You’ll probably want to
delete the heading Last Name and you’ll want to sort the column to push any
blanks to the bottom of the list. You don’t have to delete duplicates but feel
free to.
When you’re done, save the file not as type Excel, but as Text (tab
delimited). Change the name of the file to surnames.dic. You’ll get a warning
message, but ignore it and close Excel.
Reference The New Dictionary
Now to use this list (or any other list you may have created), open MS Word.
All of the MS Office applications will work since they all use the same
dictionary, but Word is the easiest to manipulate.
Go to the Tools menu and choose Options… Select the Spelling & Grammar
tab and then click on Dictionaries… At the bottom of the Custom Dictionaries
popup you’ll see Add. Click there and then go and choose the file you just
created. Click OK until you’re back in Word.
Now deliberately misspell one of your contact’s names and Spell Checker
will recommend the correct spelling for you!
Remember, you can create a list of practically anything that you want help
spelling—customer company names to complex pharmaceutical agents.
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