How to delete a word from Word97's main dictionary?

Hi elfield,
Try this:
go to Tools-AutoCorrect and enter "judgement" to the Replace-box and enter "judgment" into the With-box.
It works on my system.
Regards,  Manfred

Hi elfield,
Try this:
go to Tools-AutoCorrect and enter "judgement" to the Replace-box and enter "judgment" into the With-box.
It works on my system.
Regards,  Manfred

elfield, to really delete the word, use Windows explorer to find the file "custom.dic". Shift and right-click it and open with Notepad. Delete the word from the list. Save the file (must be text!) and close it. All gone.

manf788265:  Thanks for the interesting comment.  it worked as you said.  But it's not quite what I want:  i.e., the "wrong" word is not shown as misspelled, it doesn't work with cut and paste, or import.  Nonetheless, if no makes a better suggestion after a day or two, your comment will be the answer.

Dreamboat: The word is not in my custom dictionary, it's in the main dictionary.  I want to delete the word from the main dictionary.

Are you sure it's in the "main" dictionary? You cannot add words to the main dictionary.

However, if you told it to skip that word in a document, it will bypass that word in that document. If you've got a specific document that you've spellchecked, and can't get the spellchecker to pick up a misspelled word, open the file. Go to Tools-Options-Spelling and grammar tab. Hit the RECHECK DOCUMENT button. Run spellcheck on the file again.

Dreamboat:  Yes, the word "judgement" is in the main dictionary.  I didn't add it, it was already there.  "judgement" is a secondary spelling of the word "judgment".  Both are correct, but I prefer "judgment", and want Word to flag "judgement" as a spelling error.

The simplest way is to remove "judgement" from the main dictionary, if that's possible.  If not, it would be nice if there was a different way to tell Word to flag a word that is in its main dictionary as spelling error.

I'm sorry! Did not pick up on that, though your question clearly states it. If this is your PC, you could create a quick macro that finds the word judgement and changes it to judgment throughout the whole document. Then you have to run two "spellchecks", the usual, and the macro.

Sub JM()
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "judgement"
        .Replacement.Text = "judgment"
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub

That would be the code.

I'm sorry! Did not pick up on that, though your question clearly states it. If this is your PC, you could create a quick macro that finds the word judgement and changes it to judgment throughout the whole document. Then you have to run two "spellchecks", the usual, and the macro.

Sub JM()
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "judgement"
        .Replacement.Text = "judgment"
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub

That would be the code.

jbehm: That's exactly what I want.  I tried it and it works.  Thanks.

In case that link disappears:  The solution is to create an "exclusion dictionary" in the same directory as the main dictionary -- a simple text file that contains the words to exclude, one per line.  The file name must be the same as the main dictionary, but with the .exc extension.  For Word97, the main dictionary is in mssp2_en.lex, so the exclusion file name is mssp2_en.exc.

Thanks to manf788265 and dreamboat for their suggestions and comments.

Thanks goes to MVPS.ORG

Way to go, jbehm.