Add to dictionary word not working

Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007 and 2010. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Cannot Add Words to Dictionary.

Richard notes that when doing a spelling check in the background, Word dutifully underlines words it thinks are spelled incorrectly. However, when he right-clicks on the word in order to add it to the dictionary, he finds the «add to dictionary» option grayed out, so that he cannot add it.

The most likely cause for this situation is that the language of the word you are trying to add doesn’t match the language of the dictionary. Word keeps track of the language of both your text and allows you to specify with what language a dictionary should be associated. You can check the language of your dictionary in this manner:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. Click Proofing at the left side of the dialog box.
3. Click on the Custom Dictionaries button. Word displays the Custom Dictionaries dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Custom Dictionaries dialog box.

4. In the list of dictionaries, select the one you want to check.
5. At the bottom of the dialog box is the Language drop-down list. This should be set to All Languages.
6. Close all the open dialog boxes when you are done.

If you have the custom dictionary set to something other than All Languages in step 5, then Word only lets you add words that are in the language you specified. In other words, if you set the language in step 6 to French, then you won’t be able to add any words that are in English, German, Spanish, or some other language. You can always set up multiple custom dictionaries and make sure that each of them is configured to the different languages in which you are working.

If the above steps don’t solve the problem, then it is possible that you don’t have a custom dictionary set up on your system. Of course, if you tried to go through the above steps, you would have noticed fairly easily that there wasn’t a custom dictionary—there would have been nothing shown in the Custom Dictionaries dialog box (step 3).

You could also check to make sure that the dictionary is accessible by you and that you have rights to work on it. This potential problem normally only crops up if you are using a custom dictionary on a network and you don’t have sufficient permissions to make changes to the file. If you suspect this is an issue in your case, you should talk with your network administrator to get it checked out.

Author Bio

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen…

Microsoft Word «Add to dictionary» is greyed out. How to enable «Add to dictionary» in Microsoft Word?

In this post, we shall see how to enable the «Add to dictionary» menu in Microsoft Word if it is greyed out. Like I discovered today, the «Add to dictionary» menu is greyed out so I am not able to add new words to Microsoft Word dictionary.

In Microsoft Word, if we write new words that is not already in standard dictionary, then Microsoft Word highlights that words with a red line indicating it is not a correct word. If it is correct but not in dictionary, then we may want to add that word in dictionary so that it is not highlighted as an error in the document. But as in this case, sometimes, the «Add to dictionary» menu in Microsoft Word may be greyed out. So we can’t add new words to dictionary. We will see how to re-enable it. You may try the below method to enable «Add to dictionary» in Microsoft Word.

Steps to enable «Add to dictionary» greyed out in Microsoft Word:

• In the Microsoft Word document open, click on the Microft Office Menu button (Top Left Corner)
• Click on «Word Options» > «Proofing» > Custom Dictionaries.
• Check if «Custom.DIC» is set as the default dictionary. If not, set the «Custom.DIC» as the default dictionary by clicking the «Custom.DIC» and then clicking «Change Default»
• If «Custom.DIC» is set as the default dictionary as above, but «Add to dictionary» is still greyed out, then do the following:
• Click on «Word Options» > «Proofing» > Custom Dictionaries.
• Check the default dictionary language and match it with your System Default Language. In my case, the System default language was ENGLISH (US) and my dictionary default language was ENGLISH (UK). Switching it back to English (US) did the trick for me.
• If the above does not work, you can also try setting the «default dictionary language» to «All Languages» which should also enable the «Add to dictionary. 

How to find out the system Language on Windows?

• Go to «Control PanelClock, Language, and RegionLanguage»
• The language packs installed are displayed. 
• On Window 8 and above, this can also be check from «Settings» > Time & Language > Region and Language > Languages.
• If there are additional language packs installed, it is displayed along with the system default. For the system default language, the «Set as default» is already greyed out.

System Default Language in Windows 10