Setting the UK Dictionary as Default Spellchecker in Microsoft Word 2003

Are you having the problem of Microsoft’s silly dictionary switching back to US English (or some other language) no matter how many times you select UK English? Well this could be the answer to your problem.

I kept having the same problem, no matter how many times I selected UK English the spell check would flip back immediately to US English.

The only way to prevent this happening is to make sure that the Normal.dot template and all other templates you use, are set to your dictionary of choice. In the following procedure I will use the Normal.dot template as an example:

Open Microsoft Word > File > Open > Select the Normal.dot template.

If you don’t know where your Normal.dot template is located, look in the File Location window under User templates this will give you the directory where your template files are stored:

Tools > Options > File Locations

Then select the Set Language settings:

Tools >Language >Set Language

The Language window will then open. Here you can select your default language by highlighting English (UK) and clicking on the Default button at the bottom of the window. This will ensure that any documents using this template will have English (UK) as their default dictionary language from now on. Unfortunately this does not propagate to current documents so you will have to open a new document and copy the current text for these setting to take effect. A really silly situation if you ask me (if you know better way, please let me know).