21st June 2001

Some people take typos entirely too seriously, so you're left with having to catch them all (or suffer the wrath of your boss). Microsoft Word can't catch everything that may be considered a spelling problem. For instance, perhaps your taking sum surveys on howl many customers enjoy products form you're Boston warehouse. Every word is properly spelled, but contextually incorrect. Word offers help with this situation in the form of an Exclude dictionary. This allows you to tag specific words which cause you particular difficulty. Create a new document in Word, or better yet, use a standard text editor since the file must be plain text when we're finished. Enter the list of words (each one on a separate line) that you want the spell checker to flag every time it runs across it. In Microsoft Windows 95 or 98, save your exclude dictionary in either the C:\ Windows_folder \ Application Data \ Microsoft \ Proof folder or the C:\ Windows_folder \ Profiles \ User_name \ Application Data \ Microsoft \ Proof folder. In NT 4.0, save your exclude dictionary in the C:\ Windows_folder \ Profiles \ User_name folder. The name of the file should coincide with the primary language dictionary in use, but will have a file extension of .EXC. For US English, the filename is Mssp3en.lex, so the filename should be Mssp3en.exc. Now whenever you perform a spell check on a document, the words in your exclude dictionary will float to the surface for a double- check. Cases off to Lockergnomie Mike Long for uncovering this life (and job) saver!