Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 12: Using SpellCheck and the Thesaurus

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Spellchecking Your Document


The AutoCorrect feature is nice, but a traditional spellchecker provides more flexibility. At the same time, the Auto Spellcheck feature can underline words in red that aren't in the dictionary, but it doesn't fix your errors. You might need to run the spellchecker to correct the errors.

Using the Pop-Up Spelling Menu

StarWriter enables you to check the spelling of a document using a special pop-up menu, or with a standard dialog box.

To check the spelling of a single word in a document, position your mouse pointer over a word that has a red underline and click and release the right mouse button. When you do this, a menu similar to the one in Figure 12.6 is displayed.

Figure 12.6
The right-click pop-up menu contains different spelling options.

Caution - If you right-click on a word without a red underline (or with Auto Spellcheck turned off), you'll see a different menu than the one described here.


The pop-up menu is divided into two sections. The top section contains words that StarWriter suggests as possible corrections for the word you right-clicked. If you select one of the words in the top section of the menu, the word you clicked is replaced with the word you selected from the menu.

Tip - If the pop-up menu you see has only four items, starting with Spelling, StarOffice can't determine any suggestions to correct the word that you clicked on. You'll have to use a paper dictionary.


In the bottom part of the pop-up menu, the following four commands are listed:

Figure 12.7
Add opens a submenu where you can select a dictionary to which to add a word.

Tip - Adding a word to a dictionary means that word won't be marked as misspelled any longer. You learn more about this in the next section.


Figure 12.8
AutoCorrect opens a submenu where you can select a spelling correction to add to the AutoCorrect feature.

Tip - You can review any item that you add to AutoCorrect via this menu by looking it up in the AutoCorrect dialog box, described earlier in this hour.

Don't add every word to the AutoCorrect feature. It can become overburdened and sluggish. Just add words that you habitually misspell (as in the previous regrads example).

Activating the Spellcheck Dialog Box

The traditional method of spellchecking a document also works in StarOffice. You can use a spellcheck dialog box to review misspelled words and choose how to correct them.

The StarOffice spellchecker starts from the current cursor position and pauses at each word that can't be located in a StarOffice dictionary.

To start the spellchecker and check your entire document, move to the top of your document and choose Spelling from the Tools menu; then choose Check from the Spelling submenu. The Spelling dialog box appears when StarOffice finds a word that it thinks is misspelled, as in Figure 12.9.

Figure 12.9
The Spelling dialog box enables you to carefully check the spelling of your document.

When you start the Spelling dialog box, the first misspelled word (starting from your cursor position) is shown in the dialog box. If a potential correction for the word can be determined by StarOffice, the replacement is shown in the replacement field. Other potential replacements are listed in the Suggestions list that follows.

After you take one of the following actions, the spellchecker looks for the next misspelled word, and you repeat the process. This continues until the document has no misspelled words (words not found in the dictionary), or until you choose the Close option to close the dialog box. The options you can choose for each word include

Caution - If you choose this, the spellchecker does not pause on this word next time--it corrects it and moves on.


Tip - Choosing Add or Ignore All are similar in results; however, choosing Add makes the spellchecker skip the word in other documents, not just in this document.


If StarOffice can't figure out how to correct the word, the word from your document is shown in the Replacement field. In this case, choosing Replace doesn't change anything.

If you don't see the corrected spelling in the list of Suggestions, you can type anything into the Replacement field (by memory or from a dictionary) and then choose Replace, Replace All, or Add to correct the word.

Don't be surprised by some of the words that aren't included in the StarOffice spelling dictionary. For example, neither StarOffice nor Linux is included, for some reason. You might want to add them, especially if you're writing a book about StarOffice for Linux.

Caution - You can't click on the document and edit it without closing the Spelling dialog box first. But that's OK because when you restart the Spelling dialog box, it starts from the current cursor position.


Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 12: Using SpellCheck and the Thesaurus

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