External Dictionary with Word 2007

Did you try adding unknown works to Word's custom dictionary?

Wordweb Free is pretty good

TinySpell works with anything.

http://tinyspell.numerit.com/

Even Notepad. Or your browser.

You can check as you type, and any time afterwards by copying a word or a whole page.

But no spell-checker will do what you really need to do unless you add all unusual words / names to its custom list.

I'm curious as to why the Word dictionary isn't satisfactory for you. It doesn't contain every single word in the English language, but then neither will any other. If you come across a word it doesn't recognize, once you have checked elsewhere to be sure it is indeed correct, you can click 'add to dictionary' to put it into your own custom dictionary. That word won't be a problem again.

Proper names are going to be an issue with any dictionary, since there are so many names and so many spelling variations. Only the common ones and famous ones are included. Again, just click 'add to dictionary' to save your preferred spelling. You can even edit your custom dictionary directly, to put in all your character names at once, for example, although I don't have the directions for doing so at hand.

FennelGiraffe said:

You can even edit your custom dictionary directly, to put in all your character names at once, for example, although I don't have the directions for doing so at hand.

Click to expand...

I can take care of that. Here's how to add batches of words to your custom dictionary in Word 2007+:

1. Open Word. (You don't have to open a file to do this, but you can do.)

2. Click the Office button (in the upper left corner).

3. When the Office popup is displayed, click the Word Options button in the lower right.

4. Click Proofing in the left pane.

5. Click the Custom Dictionaries button in the right pane.

6. When the Custom Dictionaries popup is displayed, click the Edit Word List button on the right.

7. Add the word(s) you want to add in the Word(s) field, then click OK.

8. If you want to delete a word, select it from the list and click the Delete button.

9. When finished, click your way back out.

Easy peasy.

Of course, just using 'Add to Dictionary' is the easiest way to add a single word while performing a spell check.

I don't know of any dictionary that integrates with the word spellcheck, but I haven't had the need to look around, either. The Word dictionary is very good, and if a word isn't in it, that word probably isn't in any other electronic dictionary, either.

Word spellcheck contains pretty much every word that is in any other dictionary, so there shouldn't be many words you need to check manually. The only words I've found missing from Word's spellcheck are ones I make up, and some proper names, and these are missing from all dictionaries.

And on that rare case when a word is not in Word's dictionary, Word underlines it, just like every other word you misspell, so you just have to look it up.