How to Customize Synonym List (Word 2003)

Topic

New Reply

We wish to make a custom Synonyms list for about 100 words that create problems for our writers. We’s prefer to be able to totally remove the current synonym listing and replace the listings with our own.

How can this be done?

Hoping for any clues on where the synonym data or that of the Thesauras is kept and if it is accessable.

Many Thanks

Reply | Quote

Replies

Welcome to Woody’s Lounge!

As noted in this newsgroup thread started by you, the synonym list can’t be customized. It is part of a dictionary or thesaurus file (.lex) which has a binary format and which cannot be edited.

Reply | Quote

(Edited by jscher2000 on 29-Jan-07 12:06. )

I’m curious what you mean about the synonyms list creating problems for your writers. Does it cause them to choose inappropriate words?

I think you probably could write a macro that displayed your own list of synonyms when a user takes an action on a word (e.g., clicks a toolbar button or right-clicks). This could work side-by-side with the built-in feature. There might also be a way to suppress the Synonyms fly-out from the right-click menu by customizing one or more shortcut menus. (This can be hit-or-miss because Word has many different shortcut menus for different contexts).

Added: I’ve never developed a SmartTag, but this also might be a good application for a SmartTag. It might work like this: Word would match your targeted word list with a dotted underline, and when the user mouses over, there would be a drop-down menu of actions. I suspect it would be easier to write a macro than to develop a SmartTag…

Reply | Quote

We have our own list of words that we want to exercise caution over their use primarily because they can create difficulties in a legal situation because they are too ambiguous. An example would be the word “Supervise”. Word does have some synonyms for “supervise” but we have 2 or 3 alternatives that we want our staff to consider. I’ve created an autotext for each of the problem words that automatically formats them as they are typed to highlight that the word may be a problem. The writer either replaces them or else uses a small macro to apply the “normal” style to the word if he/she wants to use the word anyway.

We want an easy way to select an alternative of our choosing to the problem words. I would not know how to write a macro that could do this for each of the 100 or so words that we are concerned about.

Reply | Quote