UKC

The spellcheck seems to be hit and miss.  It either works by default on an installation or it does not.

I'd appreciate advice on how to get the spell checker to work on LibreOffice 5.4.4

Cheers

Hopeful bump

Have you installed the EN_GB language pack? Offered at download usually.

https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/questions/

Its all very random.  Sometimes when I install  libreoffice the spellchecker works out of the box, and other times I install then no amount of tinkering will solve the problem. I have tried all sorts of methods but it is just random.

Today I installed the beta version libreoffice 6 and the spellchecker worked out of the box, but going back to version 5, no dice.

Perplexing, especially as version 6 has crashed once so far.

I have Version: 4.3.4.1 (on a Mac) so maybe different, but on the 'tools' drop down menu if I select 'languages' the next set of options to check selection/paragraph/all text each of which in turn has some options - do you have 'English (UK)' as an option? or have you selected 'none (don't check)' by accident?.

I also have a link  to install other dictionaries.

From what I have read over the last day or so is that the issue is more a coding problem rather than a user error problem.  Way over my head but no matter what troubleshooter or tutorials I follow but if it ain't going to work, it ain't going to work.

If I was to choose a free word-processing alternative to Microsoft Word, what options are there?

Or what reasonably priced alternatives are there?

I've never had a problem with it myself so can't offer any advice.  In terms of other alternatives then there is:

- OpenOffice, used to be the same as LibreOffice but is no longer under development - if it works at least it will be stable. 

- AbiWord is another alternative - much less capable but still a fully fledged word processor, very small and fast in comparison.

- Google Docs - online, free to use and very capable.

Hope something here is useful.

Last time I used Libre Office (which was many years ago - so YMMV), the country information was carried with the document. So if the country of the document is wrong the spell checker does not function. When creating a new document the country information is copied from the default template - even with a "UK" installation the country defaulted to USA - so make sure you adjust the settings of the templates too.

Do you use cloud storage? I used LibreOffice up until last year when I decided I wanted to buy a decent whack of space for backups... a subscription to Microsoft Office came with 1TB, for less than I could find a similar amount of space anywhere else - meaning they were effectively paying me to use it

I have noticed that sometimes the spell checking doesn't work from the go-get, or hasn't been installed, so I'd agree with your findings.  I usually have to dig round the settings or install the language pack.  Sorry, but can't put my finger on which one, just furtle round and see what looks relevant; once working (again) it seems stable.  LibreOffice is indeed a good, free office suite.  If I wasn't so happy/embedded with WordPerfect, I'd be a full time user of LibreOffice (and certain wouldn't move to MS Word)

I find Libreoffice fine until I have to interact with almost anybody else at work as Word, Excel etc have become the default standards & there are too many incompatibilities, especially with formatting.