Publisher needs an English-Canada dictionary

[SamSteele]

Publisher really needs a Canadian English dictionary. Millions of documents are typed in MS Word which has such a dictionary and is widely used in Canada to avoid US spellings of neighbour, colour, honour, etc. (I notice this app uses a US dictionary so those words were flagged.)

Many Canadian English words are spelled the same way in UK English, and my preference is set to UK English, so why doesn't Publisher at least accept the same spelling? Oh no. The Affinity people have rigidly required that I go through every word in a submitted MS Word document that has words with the proper spelling to ensure that all spellings are tagged as UK English and not Canadian English. How very colonial. God help the poor French Québecer who doesn't write Parisian French!

I've said before that AFF Publisher is not a productivity tool. Once again I am confirmed.

Please, either create a Canadian English Dictionary or make the UK English dictionary accept Canadian spellings that are identical. Otherwise, your spelling checker AND your preflight app are untrustworthy.

[Joachim_L]

You can try to install the attached files packed in a ZIP. How to install look at

hyph_en_CA.dic seems to be a bit older. Maybe you can find a better version?

en_CA.zip

[Old Bruce]

8 hours ago, SamSteele said:

Publisher really needs a Canadian English dictionary.

Here on Mac we have one. Another Mac OS versus Windows OS difference.

[SamSteele]

Joachim_L wrote: You can try to install the attached files packed in a ZIP. How to install look at ...

Thank you very much Joachim.  👍😄  This eventually worked for me after messing around for a couple of hours. The trick is to create 2 subfolders under the Dictionary folder: call the first "my Dictionaries" or something, and under that create another subfolder with the locale name xx_XX.

For me this is:   C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\1.0\Dictionaries\AdditionalDictionaries\en_CA. The actual en_CA files are in the en_CA folder.

In Edit > Preferences  > Tools (no document open) I chose my AdditionalDictionaries folder.

This gave me access to the en_CA files in the en_CA subfolder. Now Publisher doesn't flag Canadian English spellings in an imported document as errors when spell-check or pre-flight is invoked. I believe that if I also installed more dictionary files, say en_US, they would be in their own en_US folder under the same AdditionalDictionaries folder. I only add the results of my efforts in the hope they will make it easier for some other poor sod to add a dictionary.

Thanks again, Joachim!

[walt.farrell]

8 minutes ago, SamSteele said:

For me this is:   C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\1.0\Dictionaries\AdditionalDictionaries\en_CA. The actual en_CA files are in the en_CA folder.

All you needed to do was create the en_CA folder in C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\1.0\Dictionaries and put the files in it. Your AdditionalDictionaries folder was not needed.

Also, you won't need to install en_US, as it's supplied with the program (though in a different location).

[SamSteele]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

All you needed to do was create the en_CA folder in C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\1.0\Dictionaries and put the files in it. Your AdditionalDictionaries folder was not needed.

Also, you won't need to install en_US, as it's supplied with the program (though in a different location).

Would that the initial instructions were as clear!