[Workaround] Did your Custom Dictionary settings disappear? Can't change your Spell Check settings? Here's a fix.

Samsung Galaxy Note 5 Gsmarena

I'm not sure how widespread this issue is, but after spending the better part of a day researching it, coming up empty, and finding my own workaround solution, I thought I'd share it with the community.

TL;DR

Due to a combination of factors, I couldn't change Spell Check from UK English to US English. I found a way around that issue.

The Situation

I'm not sure why, it may have been the Android 5.0.1 update, but for some reason the Personal Dictionary / User Dictionary disappeared from Settings. I know it was once there because I've edited words in my Personal Dictionary before, mostly when I inadvertently added a word I didn't intent do.

I previously found it under Settings > Languages and Input > Personal Dictionary, but now the Personal Dictionary menu option is simply missing. Gone. I have no idea why, and I haven't been able to find much about it online.

I double-checked under the settings for the three keyboards I have installed: SwiftKey (the one I use most often) Google Keyboard and Samsung Keyboard, but none of them had any dictionary settings within them, either.

I tried switching my default Keyboard from SwiftKey to Google Keyboard, but that didn't make the missing settings menu item reappear.

The Problem

At minimum, this would be a bit of an inconvenience, for example when you add a word to your Personal Dictionary inadvertently, then can't remove it. However, as I purchased the device in the UK, but mostly write in US English, I wanted the Spell Check to respect that.

So I went about changing all the language settings from UK English to US English: all my keyboards (SwiftKey, Google Keyboard and Samsung Keyboard), device settings, everywhere I could find a place to set language settings I change it. Mostly, that worked fine: applications were localized the way I wanted them, even typing Autocorrection worked properly. The one place it didn't work was in Spell Check (the red underlines beneath misspelled words). No matter what I did, my device refused to accept US English spellings as correct.

The Solution

Since US and UK English are similar, I decided to simply add all the regional spelling differences in my Personal Dictionary. I searched online for a comprehensive list and found this site. After doing a bit of cut, paste and a little trimming to remove non-preferred US spellings, I had a text file with 1717 US spelling variants. Now I just needed to get them into the Personal Dictionary.

I wasn't about to manually add over 1700 words to the Personal Dictionary one by one. That would have been horrendous. So I searched online and found a third-party User Dictionary Manager application here that let me import all the words in one go from a text file.

Net result: now my device accepts that I spell in both US and UK English, even though I wasn't able to access the Personal Dictionary via settings.

Anyway, I have no idea if anyone else has experienced something similar, but I wanted to share my workaround in case it may be of help to someone in the future.

(Note: this solution really only works with regional differences between languages, like US/UK English, Canada/France French or Mexico/Spain Spanish, for example.)

My Configuration

• Device: I'm using a Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Model Number SM-910F
• Carrier: I purchased the device from Three Mobile in the UK.
• Operating System: Android Lollipop 5.0.1
• Keyboards: Most of the time I use SwiftKey (currently on Version 5.3.1.66), but I've verified the problem also occurs when using Google Keyboard (current version: 4.1.22063.1974169)

Submitted by SoDark Samsung Galaxy Note 5 Gsmarena