Question

Dictionaries preferences keep changing back

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
January 13, 2026
4 replies
169 views

Hi there, hope someone can help me. I set my document Dictionary preferences to Dutch New Rules 2005, and chose Proximity for hyphenation. I also set my paragraph styles accordingly. Then I noticed that the hyphenation is not correct, and I check the Dictionary preferences. To my surprise it is now set to Dutch Old Rules, and hyphenation is set to Hunspell. So I change it back to what is should be, but after a short while it is set back to the wrong settings. The hyphenation itself stays incorrect, I have top manually adjust it.

How is this possible? The settings keeps changing back, the hyphenations keeps being wrong. I have never had this problem.

rob day

Community Expert

Hi @Robin33051106vfds , Also, keep in mind that language is a character level property—you can have the texts within a paragraph set to multiple languages. Here I have some Dutch text with a mixed Language setting. The spell checker flags the Dutch words set to English Language

Screen Shot 13.png

If I set all of the character's Language to Dutch: Old Rules there are only a few words flagged:

Screen Shot 14.png

R

Robin33051106vfdsAuthor

Hi guys,

Thank for your reactions, but I think you're missing the point. I'm aware how to work with the dictionaries, and setting the right preferences in InDesign. I'm indeed very strict in doing so. The real problem is that the settings keep changing, even in real time. Check also screenshot 1.png, you'll see that the text tool is showing the correct Nederlands Nieuwe Spelling. But at the same time, the Document Preference shows Oude Spellingregels.

Furthermore, I changed the setting back to Nieuwe Spelling, scrolled down a page and selected an other bit of text. The same thing happened.

I never had this happening before, so I think it is a bug in InDesign. By the way, Im using version 20.5.1. InDeed an older version. That is because we are working for specific clients and use specific SaaS software.

Thank you

Peter Spier

Community Expert

OK, I t5hink you have a common misconception about the Dictionary preference settings. This preference has nothing whartsoever to do with the language assignment in the document itself. All it does is tell InDesing which dictionary you want to use for each language. The language listed in the prefs dialog when you open it has no effect on your actual text language assignments.

If your text has the correct language assigned at the character level in the document, and you have assigned what you think is the correct dictionary in the prefs for that language, then I would say that the problem is actually in the dictionary itself.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

Let me start by saying that I don't work with Dutch languages, but my understanding is that the Dutch old Rules and the Dutch 2005 rules are treated as distinct languages by by InDesign, so you would need to be sure that your styles assigned to the text actually are specifying the 2005 rules under Advanced Character Formats for both the Paragraph and Character Style definitions. Have you verified that?

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

Hi Robin,

And could you also describe the InDesign version and the OS version?

If macOS, have you given InDesign full disk access?

Apple menu > System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

Hi Robin,

Did you set your Dictionary to Dutch New Rules 2005 while no documents were open? This will affect all future new documents. Older existing documents will have to have that setting given to them once they are opened because the Dictionary is an Application preference; not document-specific.

In either case, the Hunspell checker is good to use.

Also, are you setting the language in your Paragraph Styles within the document?

If you are correctly using paragraph styles; are you careful to not allow the paragraph style to be based on "Basic Paragraph Style" nor an invasive-species style from Word named "Normal". Your paragraph style settings will be stable is usually based on No Paragraph Style.

Mike Witherell

R

Robin33051106vfdsAuthor

Hi Mike

Yes I did set the Dictionary preferences while no documents were open. It is meant to be set to Dutch New Rules, the strange thing is that the setting seems to be changed on its own. I never use Dutch Old Rules. Also, for other languages I change the prefence to English, or German, or whatever. I never had any problem like this, although I noticed it just now with the Dutch version.

And indeed, I have the paragraph styles set in the right language.

Furthermore, I don't agree with you about yhe Hunspell checker. In Dutch, that gives hyphenations that are really not correct.

The strange thing is, that after i set the right preferences, a minute later it seems to reset itself to the wrong setting.

Thanks

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