A spelling exclusion list is a list of words that can force Word to mark as misspelled, even when listed in the main dictionary as spelled words. We will show you how to add a custom list of words that you want to always mark as misspelled.
As an example, if you tend to write “to sue” instead of “use”, O “dad” instead of “patent”, the normal spell checker will think that “to sue” and “dad” they are correctly written words, when that's seldom what i meant to write. Or maybe you are following style guidelines and using specific word spellings, What “theater” instead of “theater”. In these examples, I would add the words “demand”, “dad” and “theater” to the exclude list to be excluded from the main dictionary and marked as misspelled, whatever happens.
Marking words as misspelled does not mean they will be corrected automatically. If you really wanted to use one of those words in a specific case, you can choose to ignore the word every time the spell checker marks it. The exclusion list is an indirect way of “delete” words from the main Word dictionary.
Exclusion list files are standard text files. You can edit them with any text editor like Notepad, o inclusive con Word (as long as you save it in text-only format). When you installed Word, at least one exclude list file was created. These files are initially empty, waiting for me to add words to them. Our exclude list files are in the following location on our Windows system 10. Replace “Lori” with your username on your system.
C:UsersLoriAppDataRoamingMicrosoftUProof
Depending on your version of Windows, the location of your exclude list files may be different. If you are not sure where to find the files in the exclude list, you can browse the files in a File Explorer window (o Windows Explorer). All files will start with “ExcludeDictionary” and they will end with the extension “.lex”. Because, if you search “ExcludeDictionary * .lex”, should find the files (is an asterisk after “ExcludeDictionary”).
Once you have found the location of your exclude list files, it is possible to see multiple files. How can you know which one to use? The file name is structured to help you determine exactly that. The main part of the file name includes a two character language code, like “EN” for English and “FR” for French. After the language code, there are four alphanumeric digits (hexadecimal) called “Language LCID”. This indicates which dialect of the specified language the exclude file covers. There is a complete list of LCID language codes, despite this, that list does not include the language codes. There's a list including language codes, but it is not as complete as the list above.
We found two files in our system as shown in the image below. We only have one file in English, but there could be more than one file with "EN" in the name. If that was the case, we would refer to the last four characters in the first part of the file name (before extension) and we would match those characters with the items “Idiom – Country / Region” in the list of LCID language codes to find the file to use. In our example, “ON” is the language code and “0409” is the LCID language for United States English, so we will use the file “ExcludeDictionaryEN0409.lex”.
Once you have determined which exclude list file to use, right-click on the file and select “To open with” in the pop-up menu.
A dialog box appears asking you how you want to open the file. Click on “More applications”.
Scroll down the listing and select “Notepad”. If you always want to use Notepad to edit files “.lex”, click the check box “Always use this application to open .lex files” so there is a check mark in the box. After, click on “To accept”.
The exclude list file opens and is initially empty. Write the words you want to add to your exclusion list, placing a word on each line. Be sure to include all the alternatives for the word you want Word to mark as misspelled.. As an example, we include three alternatives for the word “theater” and two alternatives for “dad”.
When you're done adding to the list, save the file.
If you had Word open while changing the exclude list file, changes will not take effect yet. You must close Word and reopen it for Word to recognize the newly added content of the exclude list file.
When any of the words on the exclude list are found and flagged while performing a spell check, you may not be able to choose the correct spelling. Despite this, if you have enabled the option that automatically checks your spelling as you type, you will see red wavy lines under the words you added to the exclude list file, which will allow you to notice these words in your document and change them.
RELATED: How to use custom dictionaries in Word 2013
Another way to customize Word's spell check tool is to use custom dictionaries. These are text files that allow you to add words to the spell checker that are not in the main dictionary, but you don't want Word to be marked as misspelled. You can also limit the spell check to the main dictionary only. This is useful if you have created custom dictionaries that you don't want to use today but don't want to delete either..
