Dictionary for Publisher

[Wag]

Hi,

I never knew there was a spell check option until the new release! I excitedly clicked the little bell icon (yellow) for the pre-flight check feature and got 152 warnings, all for "Missing dictionary for language (en-IE)".

How can I install or set up the dictionary? Do I have to download a dictionary, where from? Or, alternatively, how can I tell Affinity to change the language to "en-UK" so it will start checking my spelling?

Thanks a mill.

Craig

[Dan C]

Hi Wag

Firstly, please navigate to Text>Spelling>Check Spelling when typing and make sure this option is checked.

Now, select all your text objects and open the Character Studio. Under the 'Language' dropdown you can set the Spelling Language, by default you should find ENG-UK in this list.

I hope this helps!

[paulo Dekkers]

How can I add a dutch (nl-NL) dictionary in Affinity Publisher for Windows 10? 

its currently not standar availeble if you look at the Character Studio -> Under the 'Language'   -> at the [Spelling] dropdown.

Edited February 28, 2020 by paulo Dekkers
added extra info and an image

[Wag]

That's perfect. Thank you.

[Dan C]

Hi paulo Dekker,

Welcome to the forums

Could you please confirm for me, are you using Windows or Mac?

________________

I'm glad to hear this Wag, thanks for letting me know!

[paulo Dekkers]

Hi Dan C,

Thank you

I use the Affinity suite on Windows (the Windows store editions) and on iPad

Edited February 28, 2020 by paulo Dekkers

[Dan C]

Thanks for confirming that, on Windows please use the below instructions:

Spelling dictionaries are installed for the languages supported by Affinity apps, except for Chinese, Japanese and Russian. To install for these languages do the following:

1. Visit the OpenOffice™ website and download the appropriate language dictionary or try an internet search for "spelling dictionaries".
2. Create a language code folder (e.g., ru_RU) in C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\1.0\Dictionaries and copy the downloaded dictionary files into this folder.
3. Restart app.

Unfortunately it's not possible to install custom dictionaries on the iPad currently, apologies! 

[paulo Dekkers]

Hi Dan C,

Thank you for taking the time to help me. This method doen's seem to work for me,

Should this be a file with an .oxt extension?  after a restart I get the same standard dictionarys as an option. no Dutch. 

Edited February 28, 2020 by paulo Dekkers
typo correction

[Dan C]

Apologies, these files need to be either .aff or .dic files for Affinity to detect them. If you're unable to find these filetypes through OpenOffice you may have more luck from LibreOffice github page - 

https://github.com/LibreOffice/dictionaries

[gumbo23]

 

On 2/28/2020 at 1:09 PM, Dan C said:

Apologies, these files need to be either .aff or .dic files for Affinity to detect them. If you're unable to find these filetypes through OpenOffice you may have more luck from LibreOffice github page - 

https://github.com/LibreOffice/dictionaries

This is not working for me. 

Is there an easy way to get a US English dictionary installed for Mac?

[Dan C]

Hi gumbo23

The instructions provided above are for Windows, please see the below FAQ for instructions on how to add dictionaries on Mac OS -

I hope this helps!

[gumbo23]

11 minutes ago, Dan C said:

Hi gumbo23

The instructions provided above are for Windows, please see the below FAQ for instructions on how to add dictionaries on Mac OS -

I hope this helps!

I'm afraid I can't follow this at all. I've gone to https://github.com/hunspell/hunspell/releases

And downloaded this hunspell-1.7.0.tar.gz

But it's a mass of files that I don't understand.

I could not find any .aff or .dic files. 

Can you give me some more detailed guidance?

(The MacOS dictionary is set to US English but AFP is apparently not connecting with it. I've tried restarting AFP, but no joy)

 

[Old Bruce]

10 minutes ago, gumbo23 said:

(The MacOS dictionary is set to US English but AFP is apparently not connecting with it. I've tried restarting AFP, but no joy)

 

Are the various languages in Publisher set to use US English? Check the preferences in Publisher : Abbreviations, Auto-Correct, Filler Text, General and finally Title Exceptions.

[gumbo23]

3 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Are the various languages in Publisher set to use US English? Check the preferences in Publisher : Abbreviations, Auto-Correct, Filler Text, General and finally Title Exceptions.

No - there is no option for US English in these preferences.

[AlbertEp]

On 2/28/2020 at 9:55 AM, Dan C said:

Now, select all your text objects and open the Character Studio. Under the 'Language' dropdown you can set the Spelling Language, by default you should find ENG-UK in this list.

It is silly to have to do this for every textframe in the document. Isn't it possible to assign the Spelling Language for the whole document at once, or better yet: for the Affinity programs globally?

Another issue: The dutch hyphenation has some errors (for example "coronas- teunregeling" instead of corona- steunregeling). I should be able to correct this, even if it is only locally on my own mac, but i can't find a way to do this.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, AlbertEp said:

It is silly to have to do this for every textframe in the document. Isn't it possible to assign the Spelling Language for the whole document at once, or better yet: for the Affinity programs globally?

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

If you use a language that is supported as the User Interface (UI) language, that language will be the default for your documents. Unfortunately, Dutch is not one of the UI languages, so that won't work for you.

Next approach: if you use Text Styles for everything, all the standard text styles inherit from the Base style, and you can edit that style and set the language as you want.

Also: if you set one Text Frame to the language you want, say on a Master Page, then any other frames that inherit from that Master Page should have the language you want.

Finally, and perhaps easiest, if you draw a Text Frame, and then set the language in the Character panel, that language will also be used for the next Text Frame you draw.

But no, there is no document setting for the language.

2 hours ago, AlbertEp said:

Another issue: The dutch hyphenation has some errors (for example "coronas- teunregeling" instead of corona- steunregeling). I should be able to correct this, even if it is only locally on my own mac, but i can't find a way to do this.

Did you install the Dutch dictionary, or are you using one supplied by the OS?

By the way, we generally recommend not using your email address as your forum name. It's very easy for email spammers to gather your email address here if you use it as your name. You can change it at https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/settings/username if you want to.

[AlbertEp]

Thanks Walt,

All 3 approaches you mention make sense and work. It takes time to adjust to the workflow after using ID for so many years, even if it makes sense.

About the hyphenation-issue: i checked with Indesign and it makes the same mistake (coronas- teunregeling), so it must be the OS dictionary. I will figure out how to fix that.

btw: The forum name has lightning fast been taken care of by the Affinity-staff : )

 

[MarcinD]

Hi

I add .aff and .dic files. Restart app. Language is the same as my windows primary langage - Polish.
Affinity Publisher saw the dictionary files and then every word underline in red. 

If I checked "Learn spelling" then it add to dictionary and the word is recognize and red underline dissapear for it.

Why Affinity checked every one word as mistake, as he didn't recognize them? 
I downloaded dictionaries from Libre Office github page: dictionaries/pl_PL at master · LibreOffice/dictionaries · GitHub

PS: I had to add both files (.aff and .dic) for Affinity to see and handle them. If i add only one of them Affinity don't see them at all.

OS System: Windows 10.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, MarcinD said:

Why Affinity checked every one word as mistake, as he didn't recognize them?

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Possibly you downloaded them incorrectly, such is easy to do at that page. It's easier to download the files from the second post in this FAQ, I think:

If you want to check your files, examine them with a text editor. They should be plain text, and should not look like HTML when you look at them.

If they are OK, then perhaps you have the language for those words specified incorrectly. You can check that in the Character panel.

 

[InTristan258]

I have just been trying to install a New Zealand dictionary on Affinity and read through these posts. You can install using the .OXT files. You first have to open it in WinRAR or WinZIP etc and unpack it. Inside you will find the .DIC and .AFF files as previously mentioned. Move this into the folder....

On 2/29/2020 at 12:22 AM, Dan C said:

• Create a language code folder (e.g., ru_RU) in C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\1.0\Dictionaries and copy the downloaded dictionary files into this folder.
• Restart app.

and you'll be good to go.

[charlesbewlay]

On 2/28/2020 at 10:55 AM, Dan C said:

Hi Wag

Firstly, please navigate to Text>Spelling>Check Spelling when typing and make sure this option is checked.

Now, select all your text objects and open the Character Studio. Under the 'Language' dropdown you can set the Spelling Language, by default you should find ENG-UK in this list.

I hope this helps!

 

 

This is the best answer I've seen anywhere. Just select all the text and use the character panel>language and change all to whatever language you want. Far faster by far than going style by style.

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, charlesbewlay said:

This is the best answer I've seen anywhere. Just select all the text and use the character panel>language and change all to whatever language you want. Far faster by far than going style by style.

The problem with doing that is when you apply a text style in the future, the language will be changed. It's always better to define the language in the style.

If you already created all your text styles and forgot to set Language and don't want to mess with it, you can easily update them all at once, or at least with just a few changes. Sort the Text Styles panels as hierarchical and then edit the style groups for paragraph styles. For many documents, all of the paragraph styles will be under "Base" so just edit Base and set the spelling language. All of the other styles will likely inherit this change.

Cheers

[Franz Rogar]

On 2/9/2022 at 2:09 AM, walt.farrell said:

Some information is outdated in that thread, but it's locked so I can't indicate the corrections required. Here, they are:

First, the folder in which copy the new dictionaries is for APub 1.x, not the current 2.x release (there are users that will not check at "Settings > Tools > Additional dictionary folder" but copy&paste what is written there directly).

Second, the Spanish (and localizations) dictionaries links from LibreOffice are way outdated (2-5 years old), which equates to v2.8 or v.2.6. The same Spanish project released their latest version (2.9) early this year of 2025 at:

https://github.com/sbosio/rla-es/releases/

Though they're packed in ".oxt" (LibreOffice Extension), they are really ".zip" files. So, just rename the extension from .oxt > .zip and extract anywhere.

There you can grab the (highly) updated Spanish dictionaries (example: the Spanish es_ES went from 855 KB in the LibreOffice repo v2.6/v2.8 to 1,01 MB in the official repo v2.9 release) and proceed to copy them as indicated in that thread.

[MikeTO]

Yes, that 1.0 should be probably be changed to 2.0 or whatever it is now.

With regard to the Spanish dictionaries, the 2.9 dictionaries haven't been added to the official repository yet. Serif is linking to the same files used by LibreOffice and that still has the 2.6/2.8 files. When the official LibreOffice repository is updated, the links on the dictionary page will then point to the new version.

[Franz Rogar]

7 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

Yes, that 1.0 should be probably be changed to 2.0 or whatever it is now.

With regard to the Spanish dictionaries, the 2.9 dictionaries haven't been added to the official repository yet. Serif is linking to the same files used by LibreOffice and that still has the 2.6/2.8 files. When the official LibreOffice repository is updated, the links on the dictionary page will then point to the new version.

Just a note on using the LibreOffice repository: they do not update the dictionaries properly. Let me explain, the Spanish project updates and releases *all* languages at the same time, meaning LibreOffice made a mistake updating it, leaving some Spanish locals at v2.6 and other at v2.8 (even when there was a v2.7 in between, LibreOffice did not update some locals).

So, I'll keep an eye on LibreOffice repo and if they fail again to update *all* languages, I think it'd be (for a better user experience) at least indicate them where they can grab the updated and comprehensive dictionaries from the official Spanish project.