Missing dictionaries on OpenOffice.org 3

I just upgraded to OpenOffice.org 3 and I really like it. But there was a small, but very anoying problem: OO.org seemed to be unable to find any dictionaries. I found out rather quicky, that starting with OO.org 3 dictionaries are only available as extensions. Well, basically this is no problem, but the English (at least the US and GB variante) are supposed to be bundled with the installer and are not available as seperate extension.

It seems there is a little bug with the installation on Vista under certain circumstances which causes the extensions not being registered properly with OO.org.

To solve the problem, follow the same following steps:

  • Locate your OO.org “install” directory of your installation, usually it is C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\share\extensions\install” [Updated 2008-12-21 to include “extensions”, thanks to the anonymous commenter!]
  • Manuylla install the appropriate dictionary extension (“dict-en.oxt”, “dict-de.oxt”, “dict-fr.oxt”, “dict-it.oxt”) by either launching the oxt directly or by chosing Tools -> Extension Manager.

For me this worked after restarting OO.org totally (i.e. closing down all Writer, Calc, …).

2 thoughts on “Missing dictionaries on OpenOffice.org 3”

  1. very helpful, thank you but there was a slight error in your instruction
    which is:
    C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\share\extensions\install
    not
    C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\share\install
    you missed out extensions, got me wondering for a while why the install folder does not exist.

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