[ubuntu-za] OPen Office

[Jason Norwood-Young]

On Mon, 2007-09-10 at 08:22 +0200, Bill Cairns wrote:
> Ja ja I know this is an Ubuntu forum and not Open Office, but you people
> are so smart that I thought I would chance it ...
> 
> A weird problem - that when I take a document from MS Word to my Unbuntu
> machine and open it with Open Office writer, it gets itself into a knot
> with its spelling and can't even find simple words (actors, roles,
> watching). My language settings are all set to English (UK). Should I be
> setting something else somewhere?
> 
> I do not have the same problem when I start a document in OO on the
> Ubuntu side even if I save it as an MS Office 6 document.

Hi Bill

The problem (I'm guessing) is that Word docs have the language they were
written in encoded in them. So if the person who wrote the doc had his
OS language (or even just his MS Word language) set to US English, your
spell checker would try compare it to a US English dictionary. 

Fixing it is another story and something I've never bothered trying. But
I suggest you first check that you've got the US English dictionary
installed (sudo apt-get install myspell-en-us) and also check your
default language settings under Options/Language settings/Languages.

J