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change spel language

  • 6 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 10 views
  • Last reply by deridder.1

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Hi there,

Can't change the spelling correction language, I've added english 5 times, restarted etc. nothing works. Help would be apreciated, thanks

Hi there, Can't change the spelling correction language, I've added english 5 times, restarted etc. nothing works. Help would be apreciated, thanks

All Replies (6)

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It is possible that you confused dictionary with language pack and that you actually do not have a dictionary installed. This is a misunderstanding we regularly see happen. What you see in "Settings -> General -> Language and Appearance" is about the language for the Firefox user interface and for indicating to a website what languages you prefer.

Installed dictionaries appear under "Add-ons -> Dictionaries". Installed languages for the user interface appear under "Add-ons -> Languages".

Note that not all Firefox versions come with a spell check dictionary for licensing reasons. Note that for spell check you need a dictionary. A language pack provides string translations for the user interface.


You can see which dictionary is selected if you right-click in a text area and open the Languages sub menu. At least one dictionary should be installed and have a check mark to indicate that it is selected.

  • open the "Add Dictionaries" link to install a dictionary if you do not have one.

The spelling checker is enabled if [X] "Check Spelling" in the right-click context menu has a checkmark.

You can look here for dictionaries:

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I suddenly don't have the option of switching when I rightclick on languages if a word is spelled incorrect, this happend just few days ago, I added english dictionary multiple times, I just reinstalled firefox but also this did nothing. Very odd that this suddenly happend and I can't get it back

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Is that also not possible in this forum ?

Note that a webpage can disable the Firefox spell checker via a spellcheck="false" attribute of an input field or textarea or editable element and possibly provide its own spelling checker. You can right-click in the text area or input field and use "Inspect" to check in the Inspector if this text area has a spellcheck="false" attribute.

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Yes here too. I see the spellcheck= false when inspected, is there a way to change this? I didn't do anything diffrent before, a few days ago this worked just fine

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This is a change that the website makes. You can edit this element and change spellcheck="false" to spellcheck= "true" to verify if that makes spell work.

If this is a plain text editor like on this forum then you can use a bookmarklet. Note that the text area must have focus (i.e. shows the cursor) since it works on the active element.

javascript:void(document.activeElement.setAttribute('spellcheck','true'));

A rich text editor might be harder to fix.

javascript:void(document.activeElement.contentDocument.querySelector('*[spellcheck]').setAttribute('spellcheck','true'));

You can create a new bookmark and paste the JavaScript code in its Location field. You can place the bookmark on the Bookmarks Toolbar for easy access.

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I edited the spellcheck to true and it did nothing. I don't think the problem lies in html coding. The option to switch languages when right clicking a word just disapeared, I tried everything to get it back but didn't wotk