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How do I add additional Dictionaries to Affinity Publisher?


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  • Staff

Affinity Publisher uses the Hunspell Engine for spell checking and it also allows for additional Hunspell dictionaries to be added. You can download additional dictionaries from LibreOffice's GitHub page here but you can find direct links in the below post. 

Once you've downloaded the correct file(s), you can use them in Affinity Publisher by following the below instructions:

Please note: There are some differences between how you install Hunspell dictionaries for macOS/Windows, since we use the default spelling dictionaries available within macOS but it's also possible to add custom Hunspell dictionaries too.

macOS

You may already have Spelling dictionaries available but not active within macOS. To check, go to:

System Preferences >  Keyboard > Text and select Set up... from the Spelling drop down menu. Please check the required language if available. If it is, check the required language and restart Affinity Publisher for the dictionary to appear within the app.

If the required language is not available within macOS, you can install standard Hunspell dictionaries for use with Affinity Publisher. Hunspell dictionaries consist of two files, xx_XX.dic and xx_XX.aff. Copy both the .dic and .aff files to: ~/Library/Spelling

Once you have done this the language should become available to select from the Spelling drop down menu in System Preferences >  Keyboard > Text. Once you've checked the required language, restart Affinity Publisher for the dictionary to appear within the app.

Hyphenation dictionaries can also be installed in a similar way but they must be installed into a subfolder. Navigate to ~/Library/Spelling/ as above and create a subfolder with a name in the format of xx-XX ( substituting xx-XX for the locale id ). The dictionary comes as a single file with a name in the format hyph_xx_XX.dic - this file should be copied to the subfolder. Now restart Affinity Publisher for the dictionary to appear within the app.

Windows

You can add additional dictionaries and hyphenation dictionaries by going to Edit > Preferences > Tools. The default Additional dictionary folder used by the app is C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\1.0\Dictionaries but you can change this location by clicking Browse... - Please make sure that you specify a folder that holds all subfolders for each locale and not one specific locale folder as this will not work!

To copy any downloaded dictionaries and hyphenation dictionaries to the Additional dictionary folder click Open... but before copying your files to this folder you will need to create a subfolder with its name in the format of xx_XX ( substituting xx_XX for the locale id ). Once you’ve done this you can copy your xx_XX.dic, xx_XX.aff and hyph_xx_XX.dic files to the subfolder. Now restart Affinity Publisher for the dictionaries to appear within the app.

Please note: Any changes to dictionaries require that you restart Affinity Publisher

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      • 2 years later...
      • Staff

      Please find below direct links to the Hunspell dictionaries. You can right click the relevant link and select the option to Save Link As... to download the file.

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