Have you ever worked on many Emails with special custom words such as legal or medical Emails, selected many words in GroupWise spell checker and chose “Add to Word list” so it will not show it as a misspelling again, just to find out that as you use your other PC or laptop, the same words come up as misspelling unless if you add it to that PC as well? The “Word list” as GroupWise calls it, is actually known as Custom Dictionary which is a common component of any application with a spell checking function.

The pre-7.x versions of GroupWise kept the Custom Dictionary file in the root of the C:\ drive. Starting with 7.0, GroupWise places the Custom Dictionary under the user’s profile folder. With a little registry change and some help from a file synchronizer such as iFolder, xDrive, etc. you can easily create a common file and have all of your GroupWise clients use the same common custom dictionary.

By placing your GroupWise custom dictionary file in iFolder, your GroupWise clients at work, at home and on your laptop will all have the same common custom dictionary, and any changes you make in one will reflect on others.

Before we start

Windows Vista and Windows 7 use a different folder structure than other versions of Windows. If you had a file under the C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\My Documents, in Vista/7 the file will reside in C:\Users\yourname\My Documents. Please see the section for Windows Vista/7 in order to see the correct location of the files.

First, locate the current file called WT61US.UWL (US for US English, other languages will have their own 2 character abbreviation.) This file is normally located in:

C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\Local Settings\Application Data\ WT61US.UWL

(Windows Vista or Windows 7 users can find it in this location):

C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Local\WT61US.UWL

1. Copy the file WT61US.UWL to your iFolder. I have mine in my iFolder under My Documents\GW

2. Rename the original file to something else, such as WT61US.UWL.ORI

3. Open REGEDIT and locate the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Novell\User Word List\6.1\US\User Word List 0

Find the key called "Name"

Double click and change its value from original location to the new iFolder location. For example:

Original Location:

C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\Local Settings\Application Data\WT61US.UWL

New Location:

C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\My Documents\iFolder\yourname\Home\GW\WT61US.UWL

Bit of Caution Needed

GroupWise loads the Custom Dictionary in memory when loaded. However, any changes are written to the file immediately. Nonetheless, use caution when using this feature on more than 1 PC at once. If PC-1 has GroupWise loaded already, and PC-2 loads GroupWise, makes changes to Custom Dictionary and exists, the changes will not be reflected on PC-1, until GroupWise is reloaded.