Proofing tools for Office 2010

A matter of confusion. I had understood that I needed Proofing Tools and not a Language Pack which I initially understood as a measure to switch the user interface and support language; e.g. from English to French. Turns out that the proofing tools that I require are in the Language Pack. That however I do feel to be a disappointment; needing to pay $25 for just the dictionary and grammar components.

There has been a progression from one version to the next in this regard. In earlier versions, the Proofing Tools were a single huge package (rather expensive) that included proofing tools for every available language. It was not possible to buy Proofing Tools for a single language at a lower cost. Users complained about this. The Proofing Tools package offered only proofing tools; it did not provide for changing the language interface, which required a different package.

So Microsoft tried a new tack, offering Language Packs (which include the language interface, if desired, along with the proofing tools) for specific languages à la carte. Then users complained about having to pay for each language separately.

Office 2013 finally gets it mostly right, offering Language Packs à la carte for any language at no charge.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has been expanding the number of languages served. There is not a Language Pack for every language, but there are Language Interface Packs (just the UI, no proofing tools) for a lot of less-used languages, and languages are constantly being added. It is no small trick to translate the UI of every Office program into another language, and MS doesn't always get it right. For example, there's currently a complaint on file because the Danish-language version uses the wrong word for "website" in citations ("Hentede" instead of "Hentet").

Anything you can get free will be pirated. You don't have to install the entire language pack; you can install just the Proofing Tools without the UI.

It is definitely wrong. You can get a lot of things for free and not "all of them" are pirated. MS sells us a software, a word processor in this case to process words. The software ALREADY includes spell check and proof reading. You only need a dictionary and thesaurus for it. MS might have compiled a dictionary and thesaurus for every language (And I really don't think that they have done such a thing. For instance for Turkish, they use the official thesaurus of the state (which is actually unreliable among many Turkish speakers and writers) and I never heard that MS paid any royalties to use it. So MS basically pirated its own thesaurus for Turkish language.

Using a thesaurus or dictionary while using MS Word is as I said, ALREADY included in the price. MS might try to sell us a thesaurus (which is presumably pirated by MS!!!) but in no way is anyone obliged to buy it. You can download any thesaurus from the internet and if you find a way to use it with MS Word; it is nowhere near to piracy.

PS: You know that MS Word has also a CUSTOM.DIC right? You can just download a thesaurus for any language, copy and paste it in CUSTOM.DIC. Is this piracy? Of course not. But don't ask her, she will tell you that you have to pay if you want to print your documents, pay more if you want to save them, pay more and more and more. Are you for real?

When you buy any version of Word, it comes with proofing tools for a certain number of languages. Traditionally, the English version of Word has included English (all varieties), French, and Spanish. If you buy a different-language version of Word, it will come with proofing tools for other languages. All those proofing tools include a spelling lexicon and a thesaurus, as well as a hyphenator. A spelling lexicon is not a thesaurus, and a list of words that you paste into CUSTOM.DIC will not function as a thesaurus because it doesn't know anything about synonyms, which is what a thesaurus is for.

None of these tools will give you definitions or pronunciation (the function of a true dictionary). That function can be added to some versions of Word by selecting a dictionary through Research.

No, it does not work for me.