How to Add or Remove Words from the Microsoft Office Word Dictionary?

Microsoft Office Word documents have played an important role in our professional lives over the years. You must open a Microsoft Office Word document every time you wish to write a professional document. The auto-correct option in Microsoft Word is one of the most beneficial, yet it may be annoying at times. For instance, when you constantly use words that aren’t in Microsoft Word’s dictionary. However, a function in Microsoft Office Word documents allows you to add those terms to your personal dictionary, which is not included with MS Office.

This post will show you how to add and remove terms from the Microsoft Word Dictionary. There are at least three methods for adding or removing terms from the Microsoft Word Dictionary. These are as follows: –

1. Through the Word context menu
2. With the help of  DEFAULT.dic dictionary file

How to Add Words from the Microsoft Office Word Dictionary using MS Word context menu?

This is the simplest method for adding custom words to the MS Office word dictionary. It is preferable if you did the following:-

Open a Microsoft Word document and input the word you want to include in the dictionary. A red line will appear below the inputted word if it is not already in the MS dictionary. Right-click on the term and choose Add to dictionary from the context menu.

In case the Add to dictionary option on your computer is greyed out, you must enable the Custom Dictionaries option. To enable Custom Dictionaries, follow the steps below:-

Step 1: Open Microsoft Word on your computer and select File from the ribbon.

Step 2: Click on Options.

Step 3: Once you’ve completed the above steps, the Word Options dialogue will show up on your screen. Choose Proofing from the menu on the left. Click on the Custom Dictionaries on the right side of Proofing.

Step 4: A new window called Custom Dictionaries appears. Select the CUSTOM.DIC checkbox. Select All Languages as the Dictionary language. Finally, press the OK button to save your changes.

Step 5: Again click on YOUR TEXT button.

You can now add your custom words to the Microsoft Office word dictionary after completing the preceding stages.

How to Remove Words from the Microsoft Office Word Dictionary using the MS Word context menu?

Step 1: Open Microsoft Word and select the File menu from the ribbon.

Step 2: Click on Options.

Step 3: Once you’ve completed the above steps, the Word Options dialogue will appear. Choose Proofing from the menu on the left. Click on Custom Dictionaries on the right side of Proofing.

Step 4: A new window called Custom Dictionaries will appear. Click on the Edit Word List button after selecting CUSTOM.DIC.

Step 5: A new window appears. You can add your custom term to the dictionary or remove any custom word from the dictionary from here.

How to Add or Remove Words from the Microsoft Office Word Dictionary using DEFAULT.dic dictionary file?

The DEFAULT.dic file is changed whenever you add or remove custom terms. We can manually edit the same file to add or remove custom terms from MS Office Word. To complete the challenge, do the following:

Step 1: To enter the Run command box, press the Windows logo + R key combination.

Step 2: Copy and paste the following route into the Run box:-

%AppData%\Microsoft\Spelling\en-US

Step 3: Click on OK on your keyboard. It will open the Spelling folder’s en-US subfolder.

Note: If you are working in another language in MS Office Word, return to the Spelling folder by browsing to this path:%AppData%Microsoft\Spelling. Now, navigate to the appropriate language folder.

Step 4: Right-click on the default.dic file and choose Open with from the context menu.

Step 5: After clicking on the Open with button, a new window will show up; choose Notepad from the list of possibilities. If Notepad does not appear at the top, click on the More apps button to see it.

Step 6: Press the OK button to open the custom dictionary in a notepad file. The words ‘#LID 1033’ appear in the first line. You can add more custom words here, one per line. If you want to remove a word from the dictionary, simply remove it from this list. Finally, save the document by pressing the Ctrl + S keyboard shortcut.

That is it.

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