Make Word's automatic spell-checking pick up dictionary changes

Question

In MS Word it's possible to add words to a custom dictionary so they're recognized. If a word is not recognized, Word automatically puts a red squiggly line underneath it. If you add that word to the custom dictionary, this line disappears. What I'd like to do is perform this process automatically via a macro. It appears that one has to manually open the dictionary file and write the new word, as there is no method on the Word Dictionary object to add words to a given dictionary. This is no problem, except that Word doesn't automatically pick up the new word and remove the red squiggly lines underneath the newly-added word. I've even tried clearing the custom dictionaries and adding them back in, but it doesn't seem to reload the dictionary until you manually run a spell check. Sample code for this follows:

Dim x As Dictionary
Dim fname As String

fname = "C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\UProof\md.dic"

' code to add word to dictionary goes here

With CustomDictionaries
    .ClearAll
    .Add fname
    .ActiveCustomDictionary = CustomDictionaries.Item(fname)

End With

Is there any way to make Word recognize the newly added word(s) in a custom dictionary without running the interactive spell check? It does this silently if you manually add words, but I can't seem to replicate this behavior in VBA. I'd like the red lines to go away automatically just like they do when you manually add words.

Answer 1

I haven't exactly solved the problem, but I think I figured out a work around. You can get a collection of Range objects which represent spelling errors using ActiveDocument.SpellingErrors. I'm going to search this collection for text matching the word I've added to the dictionary, and then set .NoProofing = True on the object. This appears to make the red lines go away, and having added the new word to the dictionary will prevent them from coming back the next time I open the document. I haven't fully tested this approach, but it looks promising.

EDIT This approach is flawed, as additional instances of the word which are entered during the same session will have the red squigglies underneath them because they haven't been explicitly ignored and the spell check isn't yet using the updated dictionary. If you just pull up the custom dictionary dialog manually and click OK, something happens in the background to re-read the dictionary. I just can't figure out how to do this in code.