"Couldn't Contact Spell Checker"

What does this error mean? Why won't it go away! I do not want to change the language region every time I open a word document from the Internet.. This is a problem that needs a permanent fix... I am a few days shy of buying MS Office 08 because of this issue. I need a operable word document program.

This was a frequent topic when iWork '08 was first released. It is related to third-party spell checkers such as SpellCatcher. If they haven't been updated to the newest versions, this error comes up, especially when opening Word documents.
If you have SpellCatcher or another spell checker installed, I would just try disabling it first & see if the problem goes away. If it doesn't, do a Spotlight search for "spell" & see what comes up. Trash anything that looks like it belongs to a third-party spell checker & restart your Mac.

Similar Messages

"Alert: Couldn't contact spell checker" in text fields

Whenever I put my cursor in a text field of any type (login, password, search, filling a form) in Safari, I get a spinning rainbow wheel and then a message that says Alert: Couldn't contact Spell Checker. If I click Okay, I have about two characters worth of typing again before I get the same alert. Making it very difficult to do much on Safari at the moment. This only started recently (within past two days). Any ideas? Can I just turn off the spell checker or auto-fill function to make the error go away?

Thanks, Peggy, I tried this solution, but alas I'm still getting the same alert message.
It is odd, though, that I have Spell Catcher still installed and running on another computer (same OS 10.5.1 and Pages 3) without this problem. Now Spell Catcher has been completely removed from this computer, but the problem persists. Spotlight finds no trace that I ever had CocoAspell (and I don't remember ever using it either).
Any other notions.
I did, by the way, restart after deleting the traces.

Pages Alert "Couldn't contact Spell Checker."

Out of the clear blue, after much use, Pages 3.0.2 Gives me an Alert "Couldn't contact Spell Checker" and the Spell checker does not work anymore in pages. However, the spell checker woks in all other programs I use. How do I get the spell checker back in pages?
I've cleaned caches and repaired permissions and no change. English is the language being used.
Thanks

This was a frequent topic when iWork '08 was first released. It is related to third-party spell checkers such as SpellCatcher. If they haven't been updated to the newest versions, this error comes up, especially when opening Word documents. If you have SpellCatcher or another spell checker installed, I would just try disabling it first & see if the problem goes away. If it doesn't, do a Spotlight search for "spell" & see what comes up. Trash anything that looks like it belongs to a third-party spell checker & restart your Mac.
But I don't think that's the problem you're experiencing. I've seen several users here with the problem of the spell checker not working in Pages. All of them were fixed by deleting the com.apple.iwork.pages.plist found in HD > Users > (your account) > Library > Preferences & then restarting Pages.

Pages Alert - "Couldn't contact Spell Checker." doesn't go away.

When opening Pages I get an Alert - "Couldn’t contact Spell Checker" which won't go away. How can I get rid of it?

Welcome to Apple Discussions
I haven't seen anyone mention that error in quite awhile. This was a frequent topic when iWork '08 was first released. It is related to third-party spell checkers such as SpellCatcher. If they haven't been updated to the newest versions, this error comes up, especially when opening Word documents.
If you have SpellCatcher or another spell checker installed, I would just try disabling it first & see if the problem goes away. If it doesn't, do a Spotlight search for "spell" & see what comes up. Trash anything that looks like it belongs to a third-party spell checker & restart your Mac.

I keep getting this message when I try to type a mail in yahoo- "Alert. Couldn't contact Spell Checker." It slows everything down and I get the beach ball

Alert! Couldn’t contact Spell Checker. I keep getting this message when I try to type a mail in yahoo. I get the beach ball and it slows down everything.This has been happening since yesterday. Please help if anyone else has had similar problems or has ideas to fix this. Thanks.

Chris,
I am having Spell Check probs too - it underlines, but that's all. I Googled and tried 5 different places for an answer - even 'jumped the pond'....but got no answers.
i started a thread, "Spell Checker on the fritz!!", and got one good and reasonable answer...
only it didn't work. It involved a .plist file, and once you toss one and do a re-start, it's supposed to re-build itself. But, no, SpCk still 'on the fritz'. I'm going to do one more re-start, but otherwise....
May the first one on either thread that gets an answer that works - PLEASE let us all know.
Keep your fingers crossed and hold your mouth right - lol. Nikki B.

Alert: "Couldn't contact Spell Checker."

When I tried to run a spelling check of a two-page document, I got the above alert. I can't choose spelling or grammar check in the prefs or drop-down Edit menu without getting that alert box every few seconds. Why can't it contact "Spell Checker?"

This was a frequent topic when iWork '08 was first released. It is related to third-party spell checkers such as Spell Catcher. If they haven't been updated to the newest versions, this error comes up, especially when opening Word documents.
If you have Spell Catcher or another spell checker installed, I would just try disabling it first & see if the problem goes away. If it doesn't, do a Spotlight search for "spell" & see what comes up. Trash anything that looks like it belongs to a third-party spell checker & restart your Mac.
You may not have installed a third-party spell checker intentionally, but some other program may have.

Getting following error: Alert - Couldn't contact Spell Checker

This is a document from the new PC version of Office (.docx). But I can see everything just fine, and the formatting seems to be intact. The only thing is that there are a load of spelling errors, but none of them are showing up.
I tried saving the file out as a Pages file type and it still won't check the spelling and gives the same error.
I also tried copy and pasting the .docx content into a new Pages document and seeing if that worked. No dice.
Deliberately typing out errors in a new Pages document show up just fine, so that doesn't appear to be the issue.
Anyone got an idea of what might be going on, or have experienced this issue?
TIA!

My guess is that for the imported text, Language is set to none.
Try to select all then go to Text Inspector, tab "More", set language to the required one.
Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE vendredi 11 juillet 2008 19:26:15)

"Can't contact Spell Checker".... in ANY program?

I've been getting the message "Can't or Couldn't contact Spell Checker" in both Neo Office and Text Edit, or any non-browser program that uses word processing. It used to happen some in Safari, but the latest version seems to have fixed the issue w/that browser. Please help, if you can. I really need spell checking! I haven't been using Pages recently, but this seems to apply to Text Edit, so I'm assuming it would apply to iWork should I do the new upgrade. It seems to be an "internal" problem that is affecting multiple software programs.
Thanks in advance for any help. Garth.

thanks peggy, but...
Been there. Done that. I did check the Crash Log files, and I can tell you that the filepath has something to do with the Frameworks folder---maybe a corrupted file in there that was brought on by one of the recent apple updates. I don't have iWork yet. Text Edit spell check doesn't work at all. Since I've had no 3rd party spell check apps installed (that I can see anywhere), then I'm assuming that this problem originated with one of the Tiger updates. It seems as though all of the posts I've read say Tiger is the OS particularly affected. I don't want to Archive and Install if it just ends up repeating the same Kernel flaw when I re-download the software updates.
thanks anyway,
GArth.

Error: Could not contact spell checker

Whenever I open Keynote or any iWork application, or even text edit for that matter, I get the following error: "Could not contact spell checker."
I have looked around on other forums and I'm not the only one to have had this problem, but no working solution has been provided, as far as I can tell.
I have not installed any third-party spellcheck software such as Spell Catcher or CocoSpell. I checked my international settings anyways, and there is no evidence that such programs exist on this computer. Nor do they show up in spotlight. There is no "services" directory in my library.
I tried replacing the "en" file under the "spelling" directory with one from a leopard machine, but no use. (So I put the old one back.)
I can't seem to figure this out. It is a system-wide error that happens with every application that uses spell checker.
Any advice would be really appreciated!

Try making a new user account and see if you are still having problems with spell checker with that user account. You may also want to try posting in the [MacOS 10.4|http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=177] area as it sounds to me like it is more of a system problem then Keynote specific.

Alert warning - Can't contact spell checker

Does any one else have this problem when using Pages? The alert notice comes up on the screen repeatedly and then causes Pages to freeze. It is most frustrating. I have reloaded iWorks, downloaded all the update but nothing seems to change. Help any one please.....

Welcome to Apple Discussions
This was a frequent topic when iWork '08 was first released. It is related to third-party spell checkers such as SpellCatcher. If they haven't been updated to the newest versions, this error comes up, especially when opening Word documents.
If you have SpellCatcher or another spell checker installed, I would just try disabling it first & see if the problem goes away. If it doesn't, do a Spotlight search for "spell" & see what comes up. Trash anything that looks like it belongs to a third-party spell checker & restart your Mac.

System-wide Spell Checker Error

I newly installed Leopard on a MacBook Pro, and now in Mail, Safari and iTunes, I get a "Couldn't contact Spell Checker" error message when I try to type in these programs. The problem disappears in Mail if I set Spell Check to never in the preferences. Safari & iTunes don't have that option, that I could see.
But that's besides the point. Spell check should be seamless and automatic. The error doesn't just occur once. It basically hangs the program because the error cycles continuously and I have to force-quit to get out of the application.
So now I am using Firefox to type this because Safari wouldn't let me type without letting me know it can't contact spell checker.
To remedy the situation, I've verified and repaired permissions, although I did not see any permissions that related to this issue. I downloaded and re-installed the 10.5.1 update. No effect. I've spotlighted 'spell checker' and only gotten the .dll file from Windows as a return.
Guesses, anyone?

etresoft, thanks for the hint. I looked and found tons of stuff, but not a thing to do with the spell checker error. I did log into another profile on the affected machine and had no trouble whatsoever. Does that mean the problem is in my home/library? I think, hopefully logically, that there's another program causing this issue. What would be the logical way to approach this?

Alert! Can't find spell checker

After installing the latest security update, I am getting the "Spinning beach ball" in Mail.app and then the message:
Alert! Can't find spell checker
Mail.app is unable to find its built-in spell checker (AppleSpell.service).
However, AppleSpell.service is where it should be, but it appears to be corrupt and won't start up to run in the background (as normal).
A workaround is to select "never" in the preferences of "Check Spelling" in Mail.app's preferences/Composing.
Any ideas how to fix this?
Can I get a non-corrupt version of the AppleSpell.service and try overwriting mine?

The "couldn't contact spell checker" error has been brought up in this forum many times (at least three times in the last two days). The error usually is the result of having remnants of older versions of third-party spell checkers, most commonly, Spell Catcher, but others have been identified. The solution is to remove those remnants and/or install the most recent version.

Spell checker alert

Whenever I open a document that I did not create with Pages, I get a recurring alert box saying that Pages "couldn't contact spell checker". If I dismiss the alert, it recurs after only 10-15 seconds. I have looked in vain at the Preferences trying to find out how to turn it off OR how to reconnect it with the spell checker. Can anyone help? It's driving me nuts!!
Mshen1
Intel duo mini running OSX 10.5.6 and iWork '08.

Finally squashed this issue - but it wasn't easy. I checked all the Library/Services directories and the only thing I had was TextExpander.service. Tried disabling that but no go. Then I realized that I had created a "Services-disabled" directory right next to my ~/Library.Services directory and over the years I had moved older service modules, modules I was testing and disabled, etc into that directory. I assumed if they weren't in the ~/Library/Services directory they wouldn't be recognized. WRONG!!! I just learned that apparently the system makes a system wide scan for service... we can see this because often services are embedded deep in the bowels of applications and they get picked up. Anyway - sure enough inside that Services-disabled directory was "Spell Catcher.services";. As soon as I deleted all the misc old services from ~/Library/Services-disabled... BOOM.. pages worked. Moral is - just because its not in services directory doesn't mean its disabled... I think... hahaha

Problems with spell checker

When attempting to spell-check document, receive alert message: "couldn't contact spell checker". Seeking ideas to resolve this. Will I have to re-install 'pages' app?

This was a frequent topic when iWork '08 was first released. It is related to third-party spell checkers such as SpellCatcher. If they haven't been updated to the newest versions, this error comes up, especially when opening Word documents.
If you have SpellCatcher or another spell checker installed, I would just try disabling it first & see if the problem goes away. If it doesn't, do a Spotlight search for "spell" & see what comes up. Trash anything that looks like it belongs to a third-party spell checker & restart your Mac.

No Spell Checker in Pages 3.0.2

I am running Pages 3.0.2 in Leopard 10.5.2 on a Dual 1.8 Ghz PowerMac with 1.5 Gig of RAM.
I do not have any external Spell Checkers installed.
I have been completely unable to run any Spelling Checks.
I always get "Cannot Contact Spell Checker"
If I have Check Spelling as you Type selected, I get that message about every 10 seconds.
What is UPPPP????
Any Solutions or Work Arounds??
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
Ted

Theodore,
You may not have any external spell checkers installed now, but I wouldn't be surprised if you once did. And when you disabled and trashed it, it left behind some remnants. I'll bet that's what Pages is finding.
-Dennis

"Couldn't Contact Spell Checker"

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