Openoffice.org Spell Checking

Openoffice.org spellcheck doesn't seems to work on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty either. It's a well known problem that can be easily fixed but somehow it gets carried on from one release to the next. When you run a spellcheck, Openoffice immediately says that spell check is complete even when the document has mis-spelled words.

Openoffice.org uses hunspell so you better check if its installed. Secondly make sure that the default language is set correctly.
# apt-cache policy hunspell hunspell: Installed: (none) Candidate: 1.2.6-1ubuntu2 Version table: 1.2.6-1ubuntu2 0 500 http://jp.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages # sudo apt-get install hunspell Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: libyaml-syck-perl libftgl2 libchm1 python-chm libalut0 libindicate0 Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following NEW packages will be installed: hunspell 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 91.5kB of archives. After this operation, 246kB of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://jp.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main hunspell 1.2.6-1ubuntu2 [91.5kB] Fetched 91.5kB in 2s (45.2kB/s) Selecting previously deselected package hunspell. (Reading database ... 190374 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking hunspell (from .../hunspell_1.2.6-1ubuntu2_i386.deb) ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Setting up hunspell (1.2.6-1ubuntu2) ...

Go to Tools > Options > Language Settings > Writing Aids. Select Hunspell Spellchecker and set the default language, on my computer it is English (USA).

Also make sure to do the same for all the menus under Tools > Language.