🚀 go-pugleaf

In one of my more recent "encounters" with Microsoft, I was told that
Powerpoint 4.0 will sometimes forget where its spelling dictionary is. You
would go to TOOLS and SPELLING and a window will appear with a "please
find speller", but there is never anything to select. (A variant on this
is when you DO find a spelling dictionary, but another box comes up asking
you to find "spelling dictionary 2". Then you're out of luck).

Their present solution is to run the Office installer setup on disk 1,
uninstall the Powerpoint program and the spellers, quit out of the setup,
run the setup again, and reinstall the Powerpoint program and the spellers
(using about 10 of the 30 office disks). Needless to say this takes a LONG
time. I called powerpoint tech and they said they know about the problem
but are not going to fix it since it only affects "a few mac
configurations".

Here is a faster solution: after you install Powerpoint (or any of the
office suite programs for that matter), run the program for the first time
and check to see all components work fine (spelling, graphs, etc). Then go
into your System Folder and look for the prefrences folder. Once you are
in the Prefrences folder, look for "Excel Settings (5)", "PowerPoint
Settings (4)" and "Word Settings (6)". Make COPIES of these prefrences and
store them somewhere outside the System Folder. If you ever have the
speller "vanish" or any other tool-component vanish, simply trash the
original prefrence in the prefrences folder and replace it with the copy
you made! (Make sure its renamed the same as the original prefrence and
not something like "Word Settings (6) COPY". That wont work.) Get back
into the program and all will be back to normal!

The reason you cant just trash the prefrence for Word, Excel and
Powerpoint and have it regenerate itself and find the path back to the
speller is because the prefrences are "locked" into looking only in a
certain place for the spellers. Thats why you have to make a copy and not
just trash the old prefrence and restart the program.


Just a little something to help you Office users out there!

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|         Royce Eddington           |    eddingto@ddbniac.com    |
|  MIS: DDB Needham / Tracy-Locke   |           - or -           |
|        Ambassador: D'DMUG         |     reddingt@onramp.net    |
|            Dallas TX              |         (personal)         |
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|             Author of the Troubleshooting 101 DA               |      
|                 Available on AOL and Info-Mac                  |
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