How to delete an entry in the spell checker dictionary?

Is there a way to manage the spell checker for the markdown editor? I have erroneously added a wrongly spelled word to the dictionary.

  • Joplin 2.7.15 (prod, darwin)
  • Markdown editor
  • macOS 12.3.1 Monterey

There is but it's very awkward, so awkward that quite a while ago I suggested that dictionary editing was improved.

The biggest problem is that the custom dictionary is protected by a checksum of its contents. If the checksum does not match, the file is either ignored or (if the dictionary has previously had words added to it through Joplin and there is a backup present) the backup is used to create a new dictionary file.

Basically you have to get a copy of the custom dictionary file ...

Windows C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Joplin\Custom Dictionary.txt
Linux $HOME'/.config/Joplin/Custom Dictionary.txt'
I assume that the Mac path will be similar to the Linux path

... and delete the word(s) you do not want as well as the line at the end starting checksum_v1 = .

Then, making sure you have a carriage return after the last entry, select all the text in the file and calculate its MD5 hash value. Then add a new line after the last dictionary entry starting checksum_v1 = followed by the hash value you just calculated e.g. checksum_v1 = 67a5759423a607897c86371ce386ee16.

It's a long time since I tried this and IIRC it still doesn't always work (or I didn't always get it right :slight_smile: ).

If the wrong word was the last word you added and the folder containing Custom Dictionary.txt also contains Custom Dictionary.txt.backup you may have another option. This would be to close Joplin, delete / rename Custom Dictionary.txt and restart Joplin. If all goes well the backup will be used to create a new dictionary file. The backup is a copy of the custom dictionary before its last update.

EDIT:
A handy tool for calculating MD5 hash values for sections of text (as well as lots more) is GCHQ's Cyberchef which is hosted on GitHub. The below link should take you directly to the MD5 "recipe".

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