Spell checking doesn't work in Openoffice

JosephS · 11-20-2009, 12:01 AM

I need some help in getting the spell checker to work in Debian Lenny.
It's no picking up the mistakes. Isn't there a apell checker installed
by default? Do I need to enable it?

Thanks

Aquarius_Girl · 11-20-2009, 12:46 AM

In open office 'Writer', open some non-empty document,

click on tools menu -> spell check -> options

A dialog box will open, see which option is marked and which is not !

JosephS · 11-20-2009, 11:24 AM

This is what I see in Debian Lenny:
Using OpenOffice 2.4

Tools > options > Language Settings > Writing aids
> Available language modules
x OpenOffice.org Hunspell SpellChecker
x OpenOffice.org New Thesaurus

> User-defined dictionaries
x standard [All]
x Debian [All]
x IgnoreAllList [All]

> Options
x Check spelling as you type
x Check capitalization
x Check special regions
x Hyphenate special regions

catkin · 11-20-2009, 12:14 PM

Is the language of the OOo document the same as the installed dictionaries? Tools->"Spelling and Language" shows the language. Tools->Language can be used to set the language.

JosephS · 11-20-2009, 01:48 PM

I don't find those places on the version of OpenOffice installed on my computer.
The only thing I found to set the language is:
Tools > options > language settings >
languages > default languages for documents
> Western English (Canada)

I changed it to English (USA). it didn't help.

I did a search with aptitude search ~dOpenOffice. This is what was installed:

Quote:

i A docvert - converts word processor files to HTML
i docvert-openoffice.org - converts word processor files to HTML usin
i A libhunspell-1.2-0 - spell checker and morphological analyzer (
i A libhyphen0 - ALTLinux hyphenation library - shared libr
i myspell-en-us - English_american dictionary for myspell
i openoffice.org - OpenOffice.org Office suite
i A openoffice.org-base - OpenOffice.org office suite - database
i A openoffice.org-base-core - OpenOffice.org office suite -- libdba
i A openoffice.org-calc - OpenOffice.org office suite - spreadsheet
i A openoffice.org-common - OpenOffice.org office suite architecture i
i A openoffice.org-core - OpenOffice.org office suite architecture d
i A openoffice.org-draw - OpenOffice.org office suite - drawing
i A openoffice.org-filter-mobiledev - Mobile Devices Filters for OpenOffice.org
i openoffice.org-gcj - OpenOffice.orgs Java libraries (native for
i A openoffice.org-headless - Headless VCL plugin for OpenOffice.org
i openoffice.org-help-en-us - English_american help for OpenOffice.org
i A openoffice.org-impress - OpenOffice.org office suite - presentation
i A openoffice.org-java-common - OpenOffice.org office suite Java support a
i openoffice.org-kde - KDE Integration for OpenOffice.org (Widget
i A openoffice.org-math - OpenOffice.org office suite - equation edi
i A openoffice.org-officebean - OpenOffice.org Office Bean
i A openoffice.org-report-builder-b - OpenOffice.org Report Builder extension -
i A openoffice.org-style-andromeda - Default symbol style for OpenOffice.org
i A openoffice.org-style-crystal - Crystal symbol style for OpenOffice.org
i openoffice.org-thesaurus-en-us - English Thesaurus for OpenOffice.org
i A openoffice.org-writer - OpenOffice.org office suite - word process
i A openoffice.org-writer2latex - Writer/Calc to LaTeX/XHTML converter exten
i A python-uno - Python interface for OpenOffice.org
i A ttf-opensymbol - The OpenSymbol TrueType font

Thanks

Aquarius_Girl · 11-20-2009, 11:09 PM

Kindly check if the following files are installed in your Debian system:
I checked them in OpenSuse through Yast. U can check them in Debian through Synaptic Package Manager !

aspell-en
ispell-american
ispell-british
words

JosephS · 11-21-2009, 01:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by anishakaul

Kindly check if the following files are installed in your Debian system:
I checked them in OpenSuse through Yast. U can check them in Debian through Synaptic Package Manager !

aspell-en
ispell-american
ispell-british
words

I have aspell-en installed. The others I don't have available in the
repository.

I can get a spell check working on a new document, but I
can't get it to check documents I have saved.

Thanks

Aquarius_Girl · 11-22-2009, 10:54 PM

Quote:

I can get a spell check working on a new document, but I
can't get it to check documents I have saved.

Anyway till your problem doesn't get solved, you can simply select all data of your old saved documents and paste them into a new file. Now spell check will be working as u said, so correct all the spellings and then save it.
The procedure may seem dumb but still it will temporarily solve your problem.

lugoteehalt · 11-26-2009, 04:36 PM

Don't know about spell checking but not being able to get 'help', even though it is installed is a known problem. It sounds a bit similar.

Simply uninstall and then reinstall the whole thing from openoffice.org. Then it works. This is the nuclear option but it's the only way as far as I know.

catkin · 11-30-2009, 08:27 AM

Have you tried asking at the OOoForum? There are some very knowledgeable and helpful OOosperts there.

the trooper · 11-30-2009, 11:07 AM

I just checked on my own system using OO(3.1),and i also didn't have spell checking capabilities.
The package i needed to install was myspell-en-gb.

Code:

ade@Pc1:~$ aptitude show myspell-en-gb 
Package: myspell-en-gb
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 1:3.1.0-4
Priority: optional
Section: text
Maintainer: Debian OpenOffice Team <debian-openoffice@lists.debian.org>
Uncompressed Size: 848k
Depends: dictionaries-common (>= 0.10) | openoffice.org-updatedicts
Conflicts: openoffice.org (<= 1.0.3-2)
Provides: myspell-dictionary, myspell-dictionary-en
Description: English_british dictionary for myspell
 This is the English_british dictionary for use with the myspell spellchecker which is currently used
 within OpenOffice.org and the mozilla spellchecker.

It is available for Lenny too:

http://packages.debian.org/lenny/myspell-en-gb

See if this works for you.
Obviously you don't have to use English(GB) version

.

JosephS · 12-01-2009, 12:14 AM

I tried:
aptitude remove openoffice.org
this only removed the meta package I think
I then tried:

Code:

Debian:~# aptitude remove openoffice.org-writer

and got the following:

Quote:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Reading task descriptions... Done
The following packages are BROKEN:
docvert-openoffice.org openoffice.org openoffice.org-help-en-us
The following packages will be REMOVED:
openoffice.org-writer
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 20.5MB will be freed.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
openoffice.org: Depends: openoffice.org-writer but it is not installable
openoffice.org-help-en-us: Depends: openoffice.org-writer but it is not installable
docvert-openoffice.org: Depends: openoffice.org-writer but it is not installable
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Remove the following packages:
docvert-openoffice.org
openoffice.org
openoffice.org-help-en-us

Score is 259

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] y
The following packages will be REMOVED:
apache2-mpm-prefork{u} apache2-utils{u} apache2.2-common{u} docvert{u}
docvert-openoffice.org{a} fckeditor{u} jpegoptim{u} libapache2-mod-php5{u} libapr1{u}
libaprutil1{u} libblas3gf{u} libgfortran3{u} liblapack3gf{u} libphp-pclzip{u} librsvg2-bin{u}
libsuitesparse-3.1.0{u} libt1-5{u} libwmf-bin{u} libwpd8c2a{u} libwpg-0.1-1{u} libwps-0.1-1{u}
lp-solve{u} openoffice.org{a} openoffice.org-base{u} openoffice.org-base-core{u}
openoffice.org-calc{u} openoffice.org-draw{u} openoffice.org-filter-mobiledev{u}
openoffice.org-headless{u} openoffice.org-help-en-us{a} openoffice.org-impress{u}
openoffice.org-math{u} openoffice.org-officebean{u} openoffice.org-report-builder-bin{u}
openoffice.org-writer openoffice.org-writer2latex{u} optipng{u} php5-cli{u} php5-common{u}
php5-gd{u} php5-tidy{u} php5-xsl{u} pwgen{u} python-uno{u}
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 44 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 134MB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] n
Abort.

Do I need to remove all this? I thought I would
try to remove the writer first to see if that
worked. If I remove all this how much work will
it be to reinstall?