Check what language macOS thinks it should be checking your spelling in. You should look in two places to see if macOS preferences changed: In Safari or any app that lets you type, click in a. Click Check Spelling While Typing on the menu. When this option is enabled, your Mac automatically checks your spelling as you type in this app, and highlights misspelled words. When it's enabled, you'll see a checkmark next to this option on the menu. In some apps, you can also enable Check Spelling While Typing and Correct Spelling.
Applies to Office 2004 and Office 2008
Microsoft lists supported languages in Word Help for Office 2008 (topic: 'About proofing tools', online help must be active) and Office 2004 (topic: 'About Microsoft proofing tools'). All versions of Office should come with the same assortment of languages, whether retail standard, retail home and student, or a volume license. Note: Office does not support right-to-left languages. In addition, you cannot change the user interface (UI) language of menus, etc, in Office.
If the language you need is listed as supported, see Check Spelling in a Different Language for instructions on installing and using the proofing tools.
- Office 2008 Languages (external link to Word Online Help) [Lene Fredborg, 11-Feb-2018: Removed outdated link to http://www.microsoft.com/Mac/help.mspx?clr=99-4-0&srcid=987fc20a-b6bd-49db-8ba1-6a263a924b411033&ep=9&target=6474a4a6-9d3e-4bde-a255-fb9286ef5d101033&CTT=RelatedLink&usid=1947081e-0474-4df5-9aab-daca1f30c55f
- Office 2004 Languages (unofficial list below)
Note that 'Dictionary' is used in Office 2004 as a generic term for a proofing file. Spelling is the most basic form of proofing, so the languages listed here can all be spellchecked. Grammar checking is very limited—you will only see grammar files for a few languages. MacOffice will only offer actual definitions for English; if you want definitions for any other language, you will need a third-party tool. Word 2004 includes proofing tools for more languages than Word X did, most notably Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese.
My Language Isn't Supported! What Now?
One possible, partial, fix: if you can download a dictionary from Aspell (or elsewhere), you may be able to load it as a custom dictionary into Word. See Word Help on creating a custom dictionary and follow it exactly. Copy the words from the Aspell dictionary into a Word custom dictionary. In this case, you probably want to set the language for the custom dictionary. Then when you tag your text as, say, Polish, Word should use the Polish custom dictionary. This approach also works well for scientific/medical dictionaries, or other specialized lexicons.
NOTE: Reports on this would be appreciated, preferably on the newsgroup. Using custom dictionaries to support additional languages is currently untested—the main issue is that the custom dictionary may be too large for Word to handle. You can create multiple custom dictionaries with different names to address this issue. If you begin to see problems, quitting Word and trashing the custom dictionary should fix them.
Otherwise, you will need to go to third-party tools. If it isn't on the installation CD, MS doesn't offer it for the Mac. SpellCatcher X is a well-known program that will integrate with Word (offering many features beyond just proofing), but not the only one. CocoAspell can be used to extend the OS language capabilities, but that route would require you to do your spell-checking in TextEdit or another word processor that leans on the OS features.
Search the archives of the microsoft.public.mac.office.word [Lene Fredborg, 11-Feb-2018: Removed outdated link to http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.mac.office.word] newsgroup to see what others have suggested for various languages. Also, look for webpages, newsgroups, listservs, or online forums specific to Mac users who speak the language you want—those people are likely to know the best workarounds and alternatives.
Be sure to let MS know that you want a language supported by using Help | Send Feedback in Word (or visit the feedback website [Lene Fredborg, 11-Feb-2018: Removed outdated link to http://www.microsoft.com/Mac/suggestions.mspx]). Offer all information that might let the MacBU understand what market is going to buy Word because it supports a particular language—such decisions are made on the basis of cost versus expected profit, so try to convince them supporting a language will earn them more money.
Unicode, Right-to-left, etc
Language support involves two dimensions—being able to type in a language, and being able to proof a language (that is, check spelling and grammar for it, like proofreading). This article concentrates on proofing. However, you should be aware that although Office is mostly Unicode-compliant so that you can type a great range of characters and diacritical marks, OFFICE DOES NOT SUPPORT RIGHT-TO-LEFT LANGUAGES such as Arabic, Hebrew, etc . Please search the archives of the microsoft.public.mac.office.word newsgroup for more information on entering characters and diacritical marks for various languages, and for alternatives that do support right-to-left languages. Mellel and Nisus Writer are the most frequently mentioned alternatives.
Word For Mac
Be sure to let MS know that you want a language supported by using Help | Send Feedback in Word (or visit the feedback website [Lene Fredborg, 11-Feb-2018: Removed outdated link to http://www.microsoft.com/Mac/suggestions.mspx]). Offer all information that might let the MacBU understand what market is going to buy Word because it supports a particular language—such decisions are made on the basis of cost versus expected profit, so try to convince them supporting a language will earn them more money.
Proofing Tools Shipped with Office 2004
The information here is an unofficial list based on one person's experience doing a custom installation that included all available proofing tools. Minor variations on this list have been reported, but it seems to be substantially accurate.
These are the proofing files that were installed in Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Shared Applications/Proofing Tools/.
Slovenian Language Spell Checker Word For Mac 2011 Update Download
- Aus English Hyph Dictionary
- Australian Spelling Dictionary
- Bokmal Spelling
- Brazilian Hyph Dictionary
- Brazilian Hyphenation
- Brazilian Spelling
- Brazilian Spelling Dictionary
- Brazilian Thesaurus
- Brazilian Thesaurus Dictionary
- Danish Dictionary
- Danish Hyphenation
- Danish Hyphenation Dictionary
- Danish Spelling
- Danish Thesaurus Dictionary
- Danish Thesaurus3
- Dutch Hyphenation Dictionary
- Dutch Spelling Dictionary
- Dutch Thesaurus Dictionary
- English (US) Word Forms
- English Grammar
- English Grammar Dictionary
- English Hyphenation
- English Spelling
- English Thesaurus
- Finnish Dictionary
- Finnish Hyphenation
- Finnish Hyphenation Dictionary
- Finnish Spelling
- Finnish Thesaurus Dictionary
- Finnish Thesaurus3
- French Dictionary1
- French Dictionary2
- French Grammar
- French Grammar Dictionary1
- French Grammar Dictionary2
- French Grammar Help
- French Grammar Parameter
- French Grammar Reference
- French Hyphen Dictionary
- French Hyphenation
- French Spelling
- French Thesaurus
- French Thesaurus Dictionary
- German Dictionary (post-reform)
- German Dictionary (pre-reform)
- German Grammar
- German Grammar Dictionary
- German Hyph Dict (post-reform)
- German Hyph Dict (pre-reform)
- German Hyphenation
- German Spelling
- German Thes Dict (post-reform)
- German Thes Dict (pre-reform)
- German Thesaurus
- Italian Grammar
- Italian Grammar Dict
- Italian Hyphenation
- Italian Hyphenation Dict
- Italian Spelling Dict
- Italian Spelling3
- Italian Thesaurus
- Italian Thesaurus Dict
- Japanese Proofing
- Japanese Proofing Dictionary
- NL Hyphenation Carbon
- NL Spelling Carbon
- NL Thesaurus Carbon
- Norwegian BOK Dictionary
- Norwegian BOK Hyph Dictionary
- Norwegian BOK Hyphenation
- Norwegian BOK Thes Dict
- Norwegian BOK Thesaurus3
- Norwegian NYN Dictionary
- Norwegian NYN Hyph Dictionary
- Norwegian NYN Hyphenation
- Nynorsk Spelling
- Portuguese Hyphation Dictionary
- Portuguese Hyphenation
- Portuguese Spelling
- Portuguese Spelling Dictionary
- Portuguese Thesaurus
- Portuguese Thesaurus Dictionary
- Spanish Dictionary
- Spanish Hyphen Dictionary
- Spanish Hyphenation
- Spanish Spelling3
- Spanish Thesaurus
- Spanish Thesaurus Dict
- Spanish Thesaurus Dict 2
- Swedish Dictionary
- Swedish Grammar
- Swedish Grammar Dictionary
- Swedish Hyphenation
- Swedish Hyphenation Dictionary
- Swedish Spelling3
- Swedish Thesaurus Dictionary
- Swedish Thesaurus3
- UK English Thesaurus
- US English Hyph Dictionary
- US English Spelling Dictionary
- US English Thesaurus
Proofing Tools Shipped with Office 2008
These are the proofing files that were installed in Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office/Shared Applications/Proofing Tools (note the change of location from Office 2004).
- BokmalHyphenation.proofingtool
- BokmalSpeller.proofingtool
- BokmalThesaurus.proofingtool
- BrazilianHyphenation.proofingtool
- BrazilianSpeller.proofingtool
- BrazilianThesaurus.proofingtool
- DanishHyphenation.proofingtool
- DanishSpeller.proofingtool
- DanishThesaurus.proofingtool
- DutchHyphenation.proofingtool
- DutchSpeller.proofingtool
- DutchThesaurus.proofingtool
- EnglishGrammar.proofingtool
- EnglishHyphenation.proofingtool
- EnglishSpeller.proofingtool
- EnglishThesaurus.proofingtool
- EnglishWordForms.lexicon
- FinnishHyphenation.proofingtool
- FinnishSpeller.proofingtool
- FinnishThesaurus.proofingtool
- FrenchGrammar.proofingtool
- FrenchHyphenation.proofingtool
- FrenchSpeller.proofingtool
- FrenchThesaurus.proofingtool
- GermanGrammar.proofingtool
- GermanHyphenation.proofingtool
- GermanSpeller.proofingtool
- GermanThesaurus.proofingtool
- ItalianGrammar.proofingtool
- ItalianHyphenation.proofingtool
- ItalianSpeller.proofingtool
- ItalianThesaurus.proofingtool
- JapaneseProofing.proofingtool
- NynorskHyphenation.proofingtool
- NynorskSpeller.proofingtool
- PortugueseHyphenation.proofingtool
- PortugueseSpeller.proofingtool
- PortugueseThesaurus.proofingtool
- SpanishHyphenation.proofingtool
- SpanishSpeller.proofingtool
- SpanishThesaurus.proofingtool
- SwedishGrammar.proofingtool
- SwedishHyphenation.proofingtool
- SwedishSpeller.proofingtool
- SwedishThesaurus.proofingtool
With Office 2011 for Mac, you can check spelling and grammar in languages other than English. Word 2011 for Mac comes with foreign-language dictionaries such as Czech, French, Russian, and more. The default dictionary determines which language’s proofing tools Word uses for spelling and grammar.
You can change Word’s default language dictionary:
Choose Tools→Language.
The Language dialog opens, and you see a list of languages.
Select the new language to use and click the Default button.
Click Yes to change Word’s default spelling and grammar checking language to the language you selected.
Click OK to close the Language dialog.
There may come a time where you want to use a different language for only a portion of your document. You can also use the Language feature to change the language of just the selected text:
Select a word or passage in the text.
Choose Tools→Language from the menu bar.
Select a language to use.
Click OK to close the Language dialog.
Choose Tools→Spelling and Grammar.
The selection will have a different spelling and grammar language applied to them and will be checked against the proofing tools for the language selected using the Language dialog. The rest of the document will be checked against Word’s default spelling and grammar language.
Making these modifications to the Language setting doesn’t change the language that’s used for the Office interface. If you want the entire Office interface to be in a particular language, you have to purchase and install an Office version that’s customized for the particular language you want to use.