Spell Check on Open Office 3.0?

What language is your document set for? OpenOffice.org is a multi-lingual product, and must know this.

Note that, presuming you have OpenOffice.org version 3 installed, the language in effect at the current cursor appears in the third panel of the status bar at the bottom of the Writer window. Does “[none]” appear?

Select Tools → Options... → Language Setttings → Languages. Set the “Locale Setting" to the language you will be using most often. Under “Western”, any languages you wish to have spelled check should have a check mark beside them indicating that a dictionary for that language is installed. If some languages are missing, select Tools → Language → More Dictionaries Online... and search out, download, and install any further dictionaries you want. Note that having too many dictionaries may slow down OpenOffice.org. So be reasonable.

You may have to turn OpenOffice.org off and on again (including the Quickstarter) so that any dictionaries you download are recognized. You will know they are recognized because you will see the check mark beside them when you check them in Select Tools → Options... → Language Setttings → Languages.

You also need to tell OpenOffice.org which language or languages your current file is using. Particularly if your file has been created from an old file that wasn’t originally created in OpenOffice.org, it may easily have a language setting of “[none]” throughout.

A quick and dirty way to set the language to something else is to select Tools → Language → For All Text. If you don’t see a language you want in the next sub-menu, select More... for a list of all languages. Then select the language you want from the lists.

If you have a paragraph or two in a different language, you can then highlight and set those paragraphs.

You will probably want to set the language in your font styles, if it isn’t correct, once you learn about styles.

Meanwhile, as a test, select some text. Then, while the text is selected, select Format → Character... → Font. In the tab of the dialog box you will see a column which allows you to set the language for your selection. In OpenOffice.org, Language is an attribute of Character. This particular dialog box comes up elsewhere, particularly as part of setting fonts and styles, and wherever it comes up you can use it to change the language of your current selection or current style (or both).

Note that if your selection contains more than one font or style of font, that won’t matter. When you change any of the items in the dialog box, only that item will be changed in your text.

OpenOffice.org is not a clone of Microsoft Office. It does some things exactly the same, but some things very differently, by intention. It is more style oriented than Microsoft Office, which I think is a good thing. So at least scan through the guides at http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/usergu... and at http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/oooaut... for cases where there is not yet a version 3 manual. If you are used to Microsoft Office, you may find the “Migration Guide” very helpful in just pointing out the differences.

Ai, yi yi! That is pretty appalling, but....your question had a rather large mistake also. "Bosses" is the plural of "boss," not the possessive form needed here. It should have been either "my boss' grammar and spelling" or "my boss's grammar and spelling." According to the New York Public Library's Guide to Style and Usage, there are "certain expressions that end in s or the s sound that traditionally require an apostrophe only: for appearance' sake, for conscience' sake, for goodness' sake". Incidentally, the NYPL Guide also suggests that when a word ends in a double s, we're better off writing its possessive with only an apostrophe: the boss' memo, the witness' statement. Many writers insist, however, that we actually hear an "es" sound attached to the possessive forms of these words, so an apostrophe -s is appropriate: boss's memo, witness's statement. If the look of the three s's in a row doesn't bother you, use that construction.

you should have a button or an option somewhere to tell it to do the spell check. but often freeware products don't come with the built-in dictionary so you have to add your own words in.