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Affinity publisher won't spell check as I go


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Despite having spell check turned on it seems to refuse to check my typing/spell.  Won't even squiggly the words.

 

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When I manually go to "Check Spelling" it takes me to a word I have already learned/ignored and won't find next or leave that one.

Obviously this is stressful, I don't want to have to copy/paste every page into another program to check spelling.

 

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  • 1 month later...
9 minutes ago, Dennison said:

I'm having the same problem

I think this is a different problem. Your misspellings are indicated. The dialog window you are showing is not for Checking the spelling but is for Correcting or ignoring or learning the wrong/alternate/archaic spelling.

I am not sure what you are clicking on, is it Change or Find Next or one of the other buttons in the window.

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Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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Thanks for quick reply.

I am trying to check the spelling and Learn words. Two approaches two different ways:

1)  select word > Text > Spelling > Spelling Options = dialog opens with a different word highlighted

2)  select word > Text > Spelling > Check Spelling = NO dialog, highlight jumps to another word in the document

Am I doing something wrong?  (Doesn't seem like it)

 

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14 minutes ago, Dennison said:

I'm having the same problem - Language > Spelling is set to English (Canada)

spell check jumps to a completed unrelated word on a different page - even when the search word is cleared.

thanks for any suggestions

I think this a different problem which I haven't seen myself in Affinity but I use search in a different way than you. You're using Text > Spelling > Spelling Options while I'm using Preflight. I bet you can workaround your issue by closing Spelling Options and re-opening it but you could also avoid it by using Preflight.

The feature you're using is the macOS spelling dialog. If the cause is what I think it is, the workaround would be to close the dialog and re-open it. Some productivity apps used to have bugs with modeless spell check and modeless find & replace because they built a list of all of the search results or misspelled words and got 'confused' when the user did something else, like editing the text more than is required to correct or replace the word. Then the app's list of results or misspelled words got offset by the number of characters inserted or deleted outside of spelling or replacing. This type of bug was really common years ago but is less common with modern apps. But regardless, the workaround of closing and re-opening the dialog should fix it.

The other way to spell check is with Preflight and it definitely doesn't have the bug you're describing so I recommend using it. Just go to Preflight and click any mispelled words in the list and it will always take you to the right one. You can customize Preflight if you're getting lots of other warnings that aren't important. I also rely on Preflight because it's currently the only way to update an index that is in a text frame on a master page layer.

Regardless of how you spell check in Affinity, if you're dealing with large amounts of text it's not going to find all the misspelled words due to a bug in macOS. The macOS spell checker simply fails to find everything when it's faced with too much text or too many misspelled words at once. I've spent a few days testing this and duplicated the problem in Apple's own apps. For example, I deleted my custom dictionary, rebooted, and then created a document with Apple's own apps using just the words that had been in the dictionary. Every word should have been flagged as a misspelling but it failed to find all of them. If I restarted and tried again with a different combination of the words, it might find one of the words it has missed the previous time.

Spell checking on macOS is just buggy. I swore I'd never install MS Office on my own Mac again but I might break down if Apple doesn't fix this bug. If you have MS Office you might consider proofing the text in Word first since Office uses Microsoft's own spell checker and wouldn't have this bug.

Download a free manual for Publisher 2.4 from this forum - expanded 300-page PDF

My system: Affinity 2.4.0 for macOS Sonoma 14.4, MacBook Pro 14" (M1 Pro)

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Thanks Mike (are you also in Toronto?)

Thank you for the explanations.  I have opened and closed the dialog box several and this has also happened with the same incorrect word in search even after closing the document and total macbook restart.

I'll try Preflight at the end, though I'd just like to teach AfPub the correct spellings so that correct spellings are not constantly being flagged eg. maximise (UK) not maximise (US).   English UK is installed. 

 

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31 minutes ago, Dennison said:

I am trying to check the spelling and Learn words. Two approaches two different ways:

The checking will step through the text to each found misspelled word. In my experience applications don't care about selections made in the text they just search through looking for mistakes.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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6 hours ago, Dennison said:

Thanks Mike (are you also in Toronto?)

Thank you for the explanations.  I have opened and closed the dialog box several and this has also happened with the same incorrect word in search even after closing the document and total macbook restart.

I'll try Preflight at the end, though I'd just like to teach AfPub the correct spellings so that correct spellings are not constantly being flagged eg. maximise (UK) not maximise (US).   English UK is installed. 

Yes, I'm in Toronto.

If there's a document or even a page of a document you can share in which the problem can be duplicated, I'll take a look if you upload it. If it's still happening after closing and re-opening the dialog then this might be something stranger. If you save, close, and re-open, does it still happen then?

BTW, another bug in the macOS spell checker that could be causing your issue is sometimes Publisher will underline a word to indicate that it's misspelled but the option to Learn the spelling isn't available to you. This is not Publisher's fault, it's a bug in macOS. I've duplicated the problem with Apple's own apps.

Why are you using the UK English spelling dictionary? While Preferences > General > Language only allows you to choose English (which is UK) or English US, you can use Character > Language > Spelling to set the language for your copy to "English (Canada)". Just do this for the Base style and everything else will inherit it.

Tip for Canadian users: With Preferences > General > Language set to English (which means UK), the other panes in Preferences that are language specific will default to English (UK). So when adding words to the Auto Correct, Abbreviations, Title Exceptions, and Filler Text lists you must ensure that you select English (Canada) for each page. The choice is specific to each pane so you have to choose it for each one, and your choice will be sticky only until you quit Publisher. I've been frustrated several times by adding words to the UK lists by mistake. Also, while English (UK) has lots of useful preset values for Auto Correct, Abbreviations, and Title Exceptions, there are no preset values for English (Canada). I went through the UK presets and manually copied the ones I wanted to English (Canada). It was a very tedious hour but it was worth it.

Download a free manual for Publisher 2.4 from this forum - expanded 300-page PDF

My system: Affinity 2.4.0 for macOS Sonoma 14.4, MacBook Pro 14" (M1 Pro)

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