14th February 2000

I can't count how many times I've reinstalled Windows in my life. Of course, with this, there comes reinstalling every program (I always do clean installs from outside the Windows shell -- at the DOS command line). Microsoft Office is one of the first things to come aboard the fresh installation. However, I used to forget to copy over user-defined files -- like 'CUSTOM.DIC' (which contains personal words to be skipped by the spell checker). I put that file into 'My Documents' and haven't had a problem. Ever inadvertently added a misspelled word to your custom dictionary? It's easy to remove; again, find the CUSTOM.DIC file and throw it into Notepad. Then, delete the line containing the word you no longer want your autocorrecting Office apps to ignore.