Spell checker doesnt work at all

[km.au]

I'm not sure how this one got through but I can confirm that check spelling dialogue doesn't work on multiple computers.

Type as you go doesn't work, nor does the dialogue box when you try and open it.

Latest version of Publisher on Windows with UK as language.

[MickRose]

Are you saying the Text/Spelling/Show spelling options doesn't open a dialogue box?

It might be a silly question but are you sure you have enabled it from the Text menu? Preview must be off also. Is the Character panel/Language/Spelling set to English? If it's set to None spelling mistakes can't be detected.

[km.au]

Yes, that's correct.

The dialogue box doesn't open, it is enabled and I'm using UK english which is set in the preferences.

This happens with all workstations (ie office) just none of our installs work with spell checker which is a bit of a deal breaker in an office.

[walt.farrell]

28 minutes ago, km.au said:

This happens with all workstations (ie office) just none of our installs work with spell checker which is a bit of a deal breaker in an office.

Perhaps you have some unique software configuration, or some unique software installed, on all those systems that is causing a problem. If you know of any special software they're all running it might be helpful to know what it is.

To start, have you checked to make sure you don't have any of the problematic 3rd-party applications listed here installed? Also, what version of Windows are your office machines running, and where did you purchase Publisher from?

[km.au]

Thanks @walt.farrell

Actually solved the issue but this is still a bug and needs to be recitifed for the Affinity team if they can somehow be notified of this.

If the windows 10 system language is defaulted to English (Australia) then this feature of Affinity will not work DESPITE that affinity publisher is set to "English (UK)".

Setting W10 to United States at the system level resolves the issue. this is not an ideal workaround though with the differences in the language.

[walt.farrell]

11 hours ago, km.au said:

Actually solved the issue but this is still a bug and needs to be recitifed for the Affinity team if they can somehow be notified of this.

As you've posted in one of the Bugs forums they'll be aware of it, and will respond at some point.

Good job figuring out the cause.

[Pauls]

@km.au could you post a screenshot of the language settings - my vm is working but I need to check I have the same settings

 

[km.au]

No problem, so on three separate workstations spellchecker doesn't function due to the system level language setting as per these settings:

 

[km.au]

Here's when it works

[km.au]

Both times "Check Spelling While Typing" in publisher is checked. It's purely solvable by setting Windows 10 to United States.

[walt.farrell]

20 minutes ago, km.au said:

Both times "Check Spelling While Typing" in publisher is checked. It's purely solvable by setting Windows 10 to United States.

It would probably also work to set Windows to UK English.

It's probably related to having the Windows system set to an English variant for which Publisher doesn't have a dictionary.

[Pauls]

Yes it's due to not having an English Australian Dictionary. The character panel language setting should be indicating Unknown(en-AU) for the spelling language.

Adding an appropriate dictionary to this location C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\1.0\Dictionaries\en-AU would get it working.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Pauls said:

Adding an appropriate dictionary to this location C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\1.0\Dictionaries\en-AU would get it working.

Such as, perhaps, the Australian English dictionary available for LibreOffice from their GitHub site. (However, they do not seem to have a hyphenation dictionary for Australian English, so it might be necessary to copy/rename the UK English hyphenation dictionary, which might be close even if not perfect.)

[km.au]

13 hours ago, Pauls said:

Yes it's due to not having an English Australian Dictionary. The character panel language setting should be indicating Unknown(en-AU) for the spelling language.

Adding an appropriate dictionary to this location C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\1.0\Dictionaries\en-AU would get it working.

Thanks, it would be good for Affinity Publisher to warn about unsupported languages  as it was confusing for many of our users. Not many people would think to visit GitHub to download dictionaries to put in a system folder. I still can't figure it out after placing .dic files here.

I can see the character panel language setting now you've pointed it out, so thanks but it should be letting users know about this incompatibility at the preferences level of the program I think  as Affinity photo is set to UK. Thanks.

[Patrick Connor]

We have made fixes/improvements to this area (warning or toast message when attempting to spell check text when no suitable dictionary is available) of the program in the latest customer beta. If you would like to try these changes the beta software is available in the forum posts listed below.

Fix: Warning given when doing a manual spell check & Preflight also has a warning for missing dictionary

The latest beta builds are downloadable from links at the top of each of these beta forum posts.

• Affinity Publisher 1.8.0.556 for Windows
• Affinity Publisher 1.8.0.556 for Mac

These betas install parallel, next to the release version (they do not overwrite your release) and so the fixes can be tried in the beta without affecting your normal workflow in the release version.

Once these programs have been through a full beta process the change will be released in a future free 1.8.0 update/patch to all customers.

[Graphics Chris]

None of this works for me and I have changed windows to many different languages from UK, AUS and US, but the spell checker never works and I have the latest version 1.9.2.1035.

[cjmmoi]

Hi, I am using Affinity Publisher/Photo 1.10.35514 and the same issue described above still occurs. Logically if I set the language to English UK within Affinity I should expect any document to default to this. Instead, like the previous user I have changed the system default language to English US (which I do not want) just so I can use the a spellchecker!! The idea of going outside of the ball park to download another dictionary makes no sense. Give the option at install time as to the language required and install all relevant files ensuring this is the language Affinity defaults to, then I can spend time on publishing.  

[walt.farrell]

25 minutes ago, cjmmoi said:

Logically if I set the language to English UK within Affinity I should expect any document to default to this. Instead, like the previous user I have changed the system default language to English US (which I do not want) just so I can use the a spellchecker!!

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums. Spellchecking in English (UK) should work for you if you have that language set in Affinity, and certainly if you have Windows set to the same language/region.

Perhaps you can switch your Windows system back to the region you prefer, and then create a sample .afpub document for us to examine, and provide some screenshots of your settings and the results you're seeing?