Computer question for you techies out there....

[AllenOK]

Ok, as some of you all know, I keep recipes on my computer. I type them up in MS Works Word Processor and store them in folders on the HDD (and yes, I backup frequently!)

One thing I've had to put up with for years, is the the dictionary "forgets" some of the abbreviations and foreign names for food in Works Word Processor. For example, my personal abbreviation for "package" is "pkg". Words like "tasso", "andouille", etc., get "forgotten". What I mean by "forgotten" is that when I type a recipe, or even look at one I typed months (or years ago), and spelled-checked it the first time, some of these words and abbreviations that I KNOW I programmed the spell-checker to accept, get flagged as a miss-spelled word.

What I'm wondering, is if there's a setting somewhere that automatically dumps the custom settings and returns the dictionary back to default after a certain time limit or number of documents opened? Is this just something that I have to put up with by using MS Works? Or, is it a sign that I need to back everything up and format the HDD?

I've had three pc's with MS Works, my desktop, second laptop, and current (third) laptop. My desktop and second laptop pc's are/were Windows XP, and came pre-loaded with MS Works. My current laptop is a Windows Vista platform, again, pre-loaded with MS Works. On my current laptop, which I bought in April, it actually didn't have a problem with the spell-checker "forgetting" my custom settings until a few days ago. Now, it's doing the same thing my other two systems are/were doing.

Any ideas?

 

[Bilby]

No where near a "techie", but are you taking updates? That may have something to do with it. Does Works write the custom dictionary to a text doc? I know I used one word processor in my past, which one I don't recall, used to do this, so you could edit the list. Don't know if that is the common practice or not. But is it possible that when you do a computer clean up, it gets deleted?

Personally, I have never like Works and find it has too many limitations for me. Sorry I can't help more.

 

[AllenOK]

MS Office does allow you to access the dictionary used for spell check. I haven't been able to figure out how to do that with Works, yet. Like you said, it's "limited"

I'm not sure if it's whenever I do a "clean up". The other day I was going through several hundred recipes. At first, these previously-spellchecked documents were giving me the jagged red line for misspelled words on words that I knew were spelled right, but being a "foreign" word, weren't in the dictionary. I would do a spell-check to add these words. 20 documents later, THE SAME WORD would get the jagged red line again.

 

[robgrave]

If you don't want to invest in MS Word (it is expensive) I suggest you might want to try a free alternative (description copied from the website):

Jarte \jär · 'tay\ noun ([SIZE=-2]est.[/SIZE] 2001) 1. A free word processor based on the Microsoft WordPad word processing engine built into Windows. 2. A fast starting, easy to use word processor that expands well beyond the WordPad feature set. 3. A small, portable word processor whose documents are fully compatible with Word and WordPad.

I've been using this program for years, and find it to be very reliable. It is certainly superior to the Works processor, and more often that not it is much more convenient to use than Word. It does have its own spell checker, and I expect it will perform reliably for you in that regard. It is a relatively small download (around 3 MB), and as I say, it is free. Go to the Jarte.com website, and take it from there.

 

[Bilby]

OpenOffice is free too I think. I know I have been sent more than one copy of it with other products like magazines in the past.

Why not just send a question off to Microsoft? It's how they work anyway isn't it - let the consumer do the debugging!

 

[AllenOK]

Hadn't thought about asking MS directly.

Thanks for the advice, all.