Thunderbird: install spell check dictionary (under Ubuntu)

28 June, 2006 - 18:46

I had some difficulties in Ubuntu with installing a new spell check dictionary for my mail client Thunderbird. My native language is Dutch (Nederlands) and writing Dutch with a English spell checker active is not very interesting. I tried the methods explained at http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/dictionaries.html , but that didn't work. I got some message that the dictionary "has been succesfully installed", but that message did not reflect the truth.

I messed a bit with the installation script inside the spell-nl.xpi file, and found out that the dictionary would/should be installed to /usr/lib/mozilla-thunderbird/components/myspell, a directory that is only writable by the root user. Apparently the installation procedure did not detect the write failure. I could put the Dutch dictionary there as root user, but I looked a bit further and found out that installing the appropriate MySpell package (myspell-nl for me) is a much cleaner/safer solution. MySpell is the spell checker of OpenOffice.org, which is also used in Thunderbird.

7 June, 2010 - 13:04

Worked well on Ubuntu 10.04.

Izzo (not verified)

Worked well on Ubuntu 10.04. Thank you!

19 June, 2008 - 15:56

Works for me too

Anonymous (not verified)

I've just had same problem and this made the trick:
sudo apt-get install myspell-en-us myspell-es

thanks

larin

25 January, 2007 - 18:35

Thanks!

Anonymous

Very useful tip! I was going nuts trying to add Spanish support to Thunderbird, but with your tip it was a matter of minutes to make it work.

5 January, 2007 - 19:16

I just wanted to add that

Anonymous

Thanks for the tip, however there is no mySpell for Canadian English. The method I used was to install the xpi file with root permissions, by opening thunderbird from a terminal with 'gksudo mozilla-thunderbird'. Once installed this way, the dictionary will appear as an option for non-root users.

30 December, 2006 - 15:50

Gracias

Anonymous

This was very helpful. Synaptic easily installed the appropriate myspell library and all is good. Thanks for publishing your solution.

27 August, 2006 - 16:13

Great work!

Anonymous

Thanks a lot for your research, this was actually very very useful for me because I had exactly the same problem (with the german dictionary). But as always in Ubuntu there was someone other who had the problem also and got a solution for it. :-)

THANKS!

19 July, 2007 - 11:30

Works fine when installed via synaptic

Anonymous

I just installed the missing myspell locale via the synaptic package manager (search for myspell). It worked flawlessly! The xpi package management of mozilla-thunderbird does obviously contain a flaw when user with Linux.

8 March, 2009 - 09:20

Yeah it worked really well

Anna Richard (not verified)

Yeah it worked really well thanks.

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