I was writing a paper today, and was groping for words. So I Alt-Tabbed to my thesaurus (Microsoft Encarta Dictionary) and punched in “thought”. I then Alt-Tabbed back to ooWriter and changed “thought” to “reflection”. On further reflection, I thought, “Surely there’s a thesaurus add-on, plugin, or extension for OpenOffice.” I searched high and low and finally through much Googling and scrounging through OpenOffice’s rather poorly designed site and series of wikis I finally discovered a thesaurus add-on. The download link didn’t work. So I Googled the file name and found a mirror. Then I went to the install instructions which told me to use the Open Office “Install new dictionaries wizard”. I opened this up which re-downloaded the thesaurus (as well as two other dictionaries) and installed them. So, all that to say, if you want a thesaurus in OpenOffice, do this:
Go to File–>Wizards–>Install New Dictionaries…
Follow the instructions.
To use the Thesaurus, put your cursor on a word and hit Ctrl-F7. Or go to Tools–>Language–>Thesaurus. Somehow I prefer Ctrl-F7.
Memo to OpenOffice team: It probably shouldn’t take a computer programmer an hour to install a thesaurus.
8 Responses
May 10th, 2007 at 11:39 am
you needed a thesaurus? okay…sorry. smart people hate when you insinuate they are smart…
May 10th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
w00t!!! Installed now!!!
October 20th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Glorious! Thank you!
PS I totally had my picture taken in 5th grade like the one in the top left. Faux books in the background and all.
October 20th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
@ EarthGirl:
Hey, if you think it looks juvenile, blame my photographer brother. And no, they’re not faux books. They’re real books that I refer to quite a lot.
September 23rd, 2009 at 4:01 am
This doesn’t (at least for me) work for OOo 3.1. Could you include the thesaurus file name at least, as I haven’t been able to find it?
I agree the Sun OOo site sucks big time, btw.
September 23rd, 2009 at 4:13 am
Actually, finally found it:
UK English thesaurus at:
http://www.weeklywhinge.com/files/en_GB_2_0_0.oxt
No need for all the above. Just install the extension and set your default language to UK English, which you probably have already done.
January 23rd, 2010 at 1:34 pm
I tried it hoping for an upgrade to the one I already have installed, but no luck. Still, it’s free…
August 2nd, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Just leaving my two cents: I agree that the thesaurus is way too hard to install and I find it lacking. I opened up the exact same document in OOo and M$ Word, and Word’s dictionary is far superior. I then went to thesaurus.com, and found that their word lists are even that much better.
I wish OOo would dump the WordNET thesaurus and use the lists at Thesaurus.com… but, like I said, that’s my two cents.
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