This is applicable to my version of Office 2003 (and I just got it to work on Office 2007) and I’m pretty sure this worked for me on Office XP (that, however, I cannot guarantee).

I hate relearning or retraining anyone and anything (it’s a character flaw) and I noticed when I restored one of my office computers because of a problem and re-installed Outlook I noticed that my dictionary forgot all the words I taught it.

Devastating. My Word documents had more red in them than a “Jaws” sequel.

I work in software and that is one of the few places besides science and medicine where we make up words and phrases (and teach them to our dictionaries by selecting “Add” or “Ignore”. I select “Add.” “Ignore” just pushes the problem off to another day, like Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.

When Mike, who knows the MS-stack well, didn’t have it at his fingertips, I went looking and figured it out with the help of a lot of smart people and a Google search. To save you a few steps I’m detailing this out so you dont have to figure it all out in the same way I had to. Someone had to be as dense as me.

I found for you so you don’t have to work the problem in the same fashion I had to.

First off, “type ahead” isn’t an easy enough definition for Microsoft. “Autofill” sounds much more palatable (by the way, as I write this, “Autofill” is failing my dictionary. Ironic.) So here are my results after three hours of research

If I were 14, saying the name of this file in class with girls in the class would have me in a lot of trouble with the teacher. Nonetheless it makes me happy to know that they haven’t beaten out the juvenile in me. Why I still think like this still makes me laugh.

Where to Start:
In order to find out what you need you should find the file, “custom.dic” in your computer.

The file can be found in the following location:
C:\Documents and Settings\[USERNAME]\Application Data\Microsoft\Proof

My scenario has you moving your settings to a new computer. If that is the case, you would set up MS Office on the new computer and then find the file above on your old computer.

  • (1) After you locate this file, copy this file over the network (my file wasn’t even 100 kb in size) or on a thumb drive (or via email if it will make it past your spam filters).
  • (2) Copy the file to the same location in your new computer.
  • (3) NOTE!! if you are reading this after a few months of loading up your custom dictionary on your old computer, simply follow this little shortcut:
  • (3 a) Rename your current (on the new pc) “custom1.dic”
  • (3 b) Copy the previous computer’s “custom.dic” into this same folder
  • (3 c) Open both files in Notepad
  • (3 d) Copy the content of both files into one column in MS Excel
  • (3 e) Sort the column alphabetically
  • (3 f) (if you’d like to weed out the duplicates, do so at this point in time)
  • (3 g) Select and copy the list (in Excel) back into the file you’ve decided to be the “custom.dic” of record (over-writing the previous entries)
  • (3 h) Save the file and Make sure its called “custom.dic”

    • Go on into your Office suite applications and see what you’ve done!

    Moving your PC Custom.dic to Your Mac

    This just in. This also works for moving your “custom.dic” file from your PC to your Apple computer running OS X and Microsoft Office.
    The only changes:

    Instead of looking under “Documents and Settins” find the “Custom Dictionary” file under

    “Users/[USERNAME]/Library/Preferences/Microsoft”

    Use the same method as above, but open both “custom.dic” and “Custom Dictionary” in TextEdit, copy, sort and clean the contents in Excel and paste them back into “Custom Dictionary”

    NOTE: In either case, your updated dictionary will not initialize until you re-start your office suite (not your PC or MAC, but the applciations within which it is used). I still use this technique with My Mac when I run Parallells and Bootcamp together; there’s no need to switch platforms and be handicapped with a spelling deficiency…