Thesaurus (Word 97 )

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Hello,

My thesaurus stopped working! I reinstalled the WORD 97 components from the Office (professional version) but I still get “no synonyms.” Yes, it does appear on the Language drop down, but no synonyms. Any help from people who know what they are doing? Thanks! Paul C MagicPaul

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The first thing to check is that your text is in the correct language. You can see the language for the currently selected text in the status bar at the bottom of the screen in Word 2000 and later, but I don’t remember for Word 97, you may have to visit Tools > Language.

StuartR

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Hello,

There is no “language” in the status bar, and the Tools > Language is set to English. Thank you for helping! Any other ideas?

Paul C MagicPaul

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Hi Paul:
Make sure the language & keyboard are all set properly. See post 211146 & post 270936 for the details. If that doesn’t correct it, try the steps listed in post 197827.
Cheers,

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Hello Phil,

Well, I tried some of what you suggested, but I am a bit scared of fooling with any data key or registry stuff. I did the find the temp and delete, and the starting the plain vanilla Word, and the Normal.dot to Normal.old things, but nothing seemed to work. It seems to me that I had this problem a few years ago, but I cannot recall how I solved it. Idid get some help here, and, from my recollection, it was not a very “fancy” solution — no real messing with stuff that would make the computer blow up! So, if there are some other “simple possible solutions” out there — I’m open to trying some!

Many thanks! Paul C

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I couldn’t find any earlier posts by you, but maybe you had a different user name. In any event, take a look at Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 236394. This does involve editing the registry, but is not as difficult as you may think…& its different than the Data key.

Later:
post 54220 gives a method that you could try without editing the registry.

I just noted that you said you reinstalled components. If you resinstalled Office, you should also reapply the SRs. I think SR-2 replaced the thesaurus.
Cheers,

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Hello,

I did, with fear and trembling, try that Microsoft solution, and it did seem to work. The thesaurus is back, but there are some missing macros and small details which I need to reinstall or fiddle with. However, I do find that two programs “sort of start” and will not close until I do the Control Alt Delete thing. They are Evidence Eliminator and Microsoft Publishing. Any ideas on fixes? If not, no problem, since I do thank you so much for helping with the Thesaurus problem. Thanks! Paul C

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I haven’t heard of Evidence Eliminator. As far as macros, you’ll need to located what template they were in. If you renamed normal.dot to something else while you tried different solutions, they should still be there. Either use the Organizer to copy the module from the old template or open the template & copy individual macros.

I recognize that post 197827 is long , but there was a method for backing up your options listed there. If you’re having problems with MS Publisher (don’t know “Publishing”), then post that question on the General Office Board, with a link back to this thread.
Cheers,

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Hello Phil and anyone else who is so kind as to help!

Well, I did it! No, not smash the ‘puter, but I did invest in an upgrade to Office 2003 Professional — even though I mainly use Word. The thesaurus works! $285.00 is a lot of money to pay for a thesaurus — so I am hoping I did the right thing! Actually, it looks like the startup problems with Microsoft Publisher and Evidence Eliminator went away — a new Publisher came with Office 2003. OK, I am trying to learn some of the changes, although it does seem to be about the same. One dual question: There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of documentation other than to go “online,” and when I do, it always defaults to Yahoo. Anyway I can make it default to either Internet Explorer or AOL? Is there a help manual that is already “living in the program on my computer?” Thanks, and I will move my whining to the appropriate forum after this, but I wanted to thank you all! Paul C

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To fire up the Word 2003 Help files hiding on your own computer, try the macro in post 364069.

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Hello, and thank you, but I am afraid that you have posted to a bit of a dummy! I have tried some VERY basic macros — I mean getting phrases to print out and maybe some formatting, but that macro in the 364069 — well, I haven’t got a clue as to how that would be “put in.” Do you just type in all that stuff after you click on “macro” and “new?” I really am a pre-schooler in comparison to you folks! However, I do thank you for all your consideration. Paul C

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Paul, here is the “for dummies” version (with apologies to the trademark holder):

Overview: This this recipe we will create two macros. The first is a “generic” procedure that emulates the Run… command dialog of the Start button. It is designed to be run from another macro that specifies what it is that should be run. This could be all rolled into one macro, of course, but having them separate means that in the future you just have to enter one line to run that program so, at least in theory, life gets easier from here on out.

1. In Word, press Alt+F8 to open the Macros dialog.
2. In the text entry area at the top, type StartRun. (If StartRun appears in the macros list, that name is taken so pick something different.)
3. The Create button should be highlighted. Click that, and the Visual Basic Editor will open up automatically. This can look like a big blank area, or there might be 3-4 windows arranged to fill the screen, or… anyway, whatever it looks like is fine.
4. You will see something like this:
   
   Sub StartRun()
   '
   ' PrintToEpsonNow Macro
   ' Macro created 8/13/2004 by PaulC
   '

   End Sub

5. On the line that is blank, where your blinking cursor is, paste in the following:
   Dim wShell As Object
   Set wShell = CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)
   wShell.Run strCommandLine
   Set wShell = Nothing

6. Click between the parentheses after Sub StartRun, and paste in the following:
   strCommandLine As String

   After you do this, the beginning of the procedure will look like this:

   Sub StartRun(strCommandLine As String)

7. If you click the Debug menu and choose Compile, the Editor should not complain. If it complains, check your work and, if everything looks correct, post the error message back here.
8. Okay, we’re done with the first procedure. Technically, this procedure is not “macro” as Word uses that term. Macros have empty parentheses after their names and do not accept parameters (such as the command line that this procedure accepts you to give it). The main significance of this is that when you display the Macros dialog, StartRun will not be listed.
9. Next! Click somewhere below the End Sub line and paste in the following:
   Sub HelpWord2003Main()
   StartRun “””C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOFFICE111033WDMAIN11.CHM”””
   End Sub

10. Yes, there are a lot of quotation marks there. The reason is that in Visual Basic, quotation marks are used to signify literal text, stuff that VB should not try to understand, but just treat as “data.” In order to insert a quotation mark into that literal text, you double it. So this is like pasting “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOFFICE111033WDMAIN11.CHM” in at the Start>Run dialog (whenever there is a space in a path or file name, Windows like to have quotation marks around the whole thing). But I digress… Try Debug>Compile again and if all is well, Save your changes here in the editor.
11. Close the Visual Basic Editor to return to Word.

You now should be able to pop up the main Word 2003 help file by calling up the Macros dialog (Alt+F8), selecting HelpWord2003Main, and clicking Run. Not convenient enough for you? How about a toolbar button.

Setting up a toolbar button: In the interest of completeness, here’s how you customize your toolbars.

1. Right-click in an empty area at the right end of the top menu bar or any toolbar. You should see a drop-down menu listing available toolbars, and, at the bottom, the choice to Customize… Click on Customize…
2. Click on the tab labeled Command, and scroll down the list on the left side, about 2/3 of the way, and highlight the word Macros. In the box on the right, you should see something like Normal.NewMacros.HelpWord2003Main (often the very end will be cut off…).
3. Click and hold on the name of your macro, and then drag it up to where you want it to be on the toolbar. When you release the mouse, you will get a big ugly button with the full name on it. Don’t worry, we’ll fix that in a second; keep this dialog open.
4. To make an attractive button, right click it and look at your many options. I suggest that you first edit the text to a useful description, such as HELP! You also can use a picture, but since the pictures are so small, it might be best to use both image and text. You can play around with this as much as you want. If it gets seriously messed up, you can drag the button off the bar and start again.
5. When your button is done, click the Close button in the Customize… dialog.
6. You’re done!

If you prefer to assign a keyboard shortcut to the macro, or want to add it to a right-click menu, there are posts here in the Lounge that explain the steps for those procedures, which also use the Customize… dialog.

Saving your changes: By default, menu and toolbar changes will be stored in your Normal template, a global storage place for macros, styles, AutoText, toolbars and other stuff, that is always present when you run Word. But Word doesn’t save the Normal template until you exit the Word program. This means that if Word were to crash, you would have to do all of that again. (We did save the macros from inside the editor, but saving the toolbar change is a little trickier.) To force Word to save the Normal template right now, you have three options:

1. Use File > Exit to close Word. If Word asks whether you’d like to save your changes to the Normal template, say Yes.
2. Use File > Save All. This is a hidden command that appears if you hold the Shift key down when you click the File menu. Pretty strange, hunh? Word is full of little surprises. I think I read about that one in one of Woody’s books.
3. Go back to the Visual Basic Editor to save the Normal template.

I hope this gives you the tools you need to get your new help button working. But, if not, please post again!

Heavily plagiarized from post 174601, but it’s okay because I wrote that one, too.

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Unbelievable! I did as you instructed, Master Jscher2000, and it worked! Thank you so much for all your help — it really is wonderful that there are such knowledgeable and kindly people out there who will share information and solve problems freely! As an enterainer and consultant (not in computers!) I do meet a large number of people who say they know a lot, but you REALLY do! I may do the tool bar thing as I did that in Word 97 a few times, but I doubt that I will be dealing with Mr. VB very much. I did open the Word help stuff, but when I click on any of the underlined text, I always get a script error message — nothing else comes through. Any ideas? Thank you so much, again, for all your help, and do tell Woody to give you a raise!! Paul C

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Thanks for your comments and you’re welcome.

> when I click on any of the underlined text, I always get a script error message

That seems to be going around; I suspect one of the latest security patches. Please visit this thread on the VBA board and post your error message: Error in VBA Help file (Office XP SP1). Hopefully someone will have some specific suggestions.

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Thanks for your comments and you’re welcome.

> when I click on any of the underlined text, I always get a script error message

That seems to be going around; I suspect one of the latest security patches. Please visit this thread on the VBA board and post your error message: Error in VBA Help file (Office XP SP1). Hopefully someone will have some specific suggestions.

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Unbelievable! I did as you instructed, Master Jscher2000, and it worked! Thank you so much for all your help — it really is wonderful that there are such knowledgeable and kindly people out there who will share information and solve problems freely! As an enterainer and consultant (not in computers!) I do meet a large number of people who say they know a lot, but you REALLY do! I may do the tool bar thing as I did that in Word 97 a few times, but I doubt that I will be dealing with Mr. VB very much. I did open the Word help stuff, but when I click on any of the underlined text, I always get a script error message — nothing else comes through. Any ideas? Thank you so much, again, for all your help, and do tell Woody to give you a raise!! Paul C

Reply | Quote

Paul, here is the “for dummies” version (with apologies to the trademark holder):

Overview: This this recipe we will create two macros. The first is a “generic” procedure that emulates the Run… command dialog of the Start button. It is designed to be run from another macro that specifies what it is that should be run. This could be all rolled into one macro, of course, but having them separate means that in the future you just have to enter one line to run that program so, at least in theory, life gets easier from here on out.

1. In Word, press Alt+F8 to open the Macros dialog.
2. In the text entry area at the top, type StartRun. (If StartRun appears in the macros list, that name is taken so pick something different.)
3. The Create button should be highlighted. Click that, and the Visual Basic Editor will open up automatically. This can look like a big blank area, or there might be 3-4 windows arranged to fill the screen, or… anyway, whatever it looks like is fine.
4. You will see something like this:
   
   Sub StartRun()
   '
   ' PrintToEpsonNow Macro
   ' Macro created 8/13/2004 by PaulC
   '

   End Sub

5. On the line that is blank, where your blinking cursor is, paste in the following:
   Dim wShell As Object
   Set wShell = CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)
   wShell.Run strCommandLine
   Set wShell = Nothing

6. Click between the parentheses after Sub StartRun, and paste in the following:
   strCommandLine As String

   After you do this, the beginning of the procedure will look like this:

   Sub StartRun(strCommandLine As String)

7. If you click the Debug menu and choose Compile, the Editor should not complain. If it complains, check your work and, if everything looks correct, post the error message back here.
8. Okay, we’re done with the first procedure. Technically, this procedure is not “macro” as Word uses that term. Macros have empty parentheses after their names and do not accept parameters (such as the command line that this procedure accepts you to give it). The main significance of this is that when you display the Macros dialog, StartRun will not be listed.
9. Next! Click somewhere below the End Sub line and paste in the following:
   Sub HelpWord2003Main()
   StartRun “””C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOFFICE111033WDMAIN11.CHM”””
   End Sub

10. Yes, there are a lot of quotation marks there. The reason is that in Visual Basic, quotation marks are used to signify literal text, stuff that VB should not try to understand, but just treat as “data.” In order to insert a quotation mark into that literal text, you double it. So this is like pasting “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOFFICE111033WDMAIN11.CHM” in at the Start>Run dialog (whenever there is a space in a path or file name, Windows like to have quotation marks around the whole thing). But I digress… Try Debug>Compile again and if all is well, Save your changes here in the editor.
11. Close the Visual Basic Editor to return to Word.

You now should be able to pop up the main Word 2003 help file by calling up the Macros dialog (Alt+F8), selecting HelpWord2003Main, and clicking Run. Not convenient enough for you? How about a toolbar button.

Setting up a toolbar button: In the interest of completeness, here’s how you customize your toolbars.

1. Right-click in an empty area at the right end of the top menu bar or any toolbar. You should see a drop-down menu listing available toolbars, and, at the bottom, the choice to Customize… Click on Customize…
2. Click on the tab labeled Command, and scroll down the list on the left side, about 2/3 of the way, and highlight the word Macros. In the box on the right, you should see something like Normal.NewMacros.HelpWord2003Main (often the very end will be cut off…).
3. Click and hold on the name of your macro, and then drag it up to where you want it to be on the toolbar. When you release the mouse, you will get a big ugly button with the full name on it. Don’t worry, we’ll fix that in a second; keep this dialog open.
4. To make an attractive button, right click it and look at your many options. I suggest that you first edit the text to a useful description, such as HELP! You also can use a picture, but since the pictures are so small, it might be best to use both image and text. You can play around with this as much as you want. If it gets seriously messed up, you can drag the button off the bar and start again.
5. When your button is done, click the Close button in the Customize… dialog.
6. You’re done!

If you prefer to assign a keyboard shortcut to the macro, or want to add it to a right-click menu, there are posts here in the Lounge that explain the steps for those procedures, which also use the Customize… dialog.

Saving your changes: By default, menu and toolbar changes will be stored in your Normal template, a global storage place for macros, styles, AutoText, toolbars and other stuff, that is always present when you run Word. But Word doesn’t save the Normal template until you exit the Word program. This means that if Word were to crash, you would have to do all of that again. (We did save the macros from inside the editor, but saving the toolbar change is a little trickier.) To force Word to save the Normal template right now, you have three options:

1. Use File > Exit to close Word. If Word asks whether you’d like to save your changes to the Normal template, say Yes.
2. Use File > Save All. This is a hidden command that appears if you hold the Shift key down when you click the File menu. Pretty strange, hunh? Word is full of little surprises. I think I read about that one in one of Woody’s books.
3. Go back to the Visual Basic Editor to save the Normal template.

I hope this gives you the tools you need to get your new help button working. But, if not, please post again!

Heavily plagiarized from post 174601, but it’s okay because I wrote that one, too.

Reply | Quote

Hello, and thank you, but I am afraid that you have posted to a bit of a dummy! I have tried some VERY basic macros — I mean getting phrases to print out and maybe some formatting, but that macro in the 364069 — well, I haven’t got a clue as to how that would be “put in.” Do you just type in all that stuff after you click on “macro” and “new?” I really am a pre-schooler in comparison to you folks! However, I do thank you for all your consideration. Paul C

Reply | Quote

To fire up the Word 2003 Help files hiding on your own computer, try the macro in post 364069.

Reply | Quote

Hello Phil and anyone else who is so kind as to help!

Well, I did it! No, not smash the ‘puter, but I did invest in an upgrade to Office 2003 Professional — even though I mainly use Word. The thesaurus works! $285.00 is a lot of money to pay for a thesaurus — so I am hoping I did the right thing! Actually, it looks like the startup problems with Microsoft Publisher and Evidence Eliminator went away — a new Publisher came with Office 2003. OK, I am trying to learn some of the changes, although it does seem to be about the same. One dual question: There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of documentation other than to go “online,” and when I do, it always defaults to Yahoo. Anyway I can make it default to either Internet Explorer or AOL? Is there a help manual that is already “living in the program on my computer?” Thanks, and I will move my whining to the appropriate forum after this, but I wanted to thank you all! Paul C

Reply | Quote

I haven’t heard of Evidence Eliminator. As far as macros, you’ll need to located what template they were in. If you renamed normal.dot to something else while you tried different solutions, they should still be there. Either use the Organizer to copy the module from the old template or open the template & copy individual macros.

I recognize that post 197827 is long , but there was a method for backing up your options listed there. If you’re having problems with MS Publisher (don’t know “Publishing”), then post that question on the General Office Board, with a link back to this thread.
Cheers,

Reply | Quote

Hello,

I did, with fear and trembling, try that Microsoft solution, and it did seem to work. The thesaurus is back, but there are some missing macros and small details which I need to reinstall or fiddle with. However, I do find that two programs “sort of start” and will not close until I do the Control Alt Delete thing. They are Evidence Eliminator and Microsoft Publishing. Any ideas on fixes? If not, no problem, since I do thank you so much for helping with the Thesaurus problem. Thanks! Paul C

Reply | Quote

I couldn’t find any earlier posts by you, but maybe you had a different user name. In any event, take a look at Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 236394. This does involve editing the registry, but is not as difficult as you may think…& its different than the Data key.

Later:
post 54220 gives a method that you could try without editing the registry.

I just noted that you said you reinstalled components. If you resinstalled Office, you should also reapply the SRs. I think SR-2 replaced the thesaurus.
Cheers,

Reply | Quote

Hello Phil,

Well, I tried some of what you suggested, but I am a bit scared of fooling with any data key or registry stuff. I did the find the temp and delete, and the starting the plain vanilla Word, and the Normal.dot to Normal.old things, but nothing seemed to work. It seems to me that I had this problem a few years ago, but I cannot recall how I solved it. Idid get some help here, and, from my recollection, it was not a very “fancy” solution — no real messing with stuff that would make the computer blow up! So, if there are some other “simple possible solutions” out there — I’m open to trying some!

Many thanks! Paul C

Reply | Quote

Hi Paul:
Make sure the language & keyboard are all set properly. See post 211146 & post 270936 for the details. If that doesn’t correct it, try the steps listed in post 197827.
Cheers,

Reply | Quote

Hello,

There is no “language” in the status bar, and the Tools > Language is set to English. Thank you for helping! Any other ideas?

Paul C MagicPaul

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I’m sure you’ve checked this already, but I have to ask – you’re sure the words you’ve tried to use it with are not ones that don’t *have* synonyms?! You have tested it with some other words, ones you know definitely should have synonyms?!

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I’m sure you’ve checked this already, but I have to ask – you’re sure the words you’ve tried to use it with are not ones that don’t *have* synonyms?! You have tested it with some other words, ones you know definitely should have synonyms?!

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Dear Mr WSjscher2000

In the hope that at long last I had found a way to reinstate blinking text in MS Word, I followed your instructions, “ In reply to: Thesaurus (Word 97 ) August 14, 2004 at 3:46 am  #864372 and as usual I ran into a blank wall just after getting started.  I’m 93 yo and am not all that computer literate, so please have much patience with me.  I completed Step 6 and can’t find the Debug menu to click on.   Can you help me, please?  You have no idea how I miss the blinking text feature that some “customer oriented” individual, (pardon my French – damn idiot!) at Microsoft saw fit to delete from Windows so long ago.

 

 

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