Concur. Word makes it very difficult to use macros from anywhere else than Normal.dotm, mainly because the keyboard shortcuts saved in another macro enable template will not transfer to a new document not based on the template when the macro itself is transfered. Neither will keeping the other template open allow usage of they keyboard shortcuts in the new document if it's not based on Normal.dotm to receive the shortcuts upon opening.

Thanks a bunch, Sorin Dolha! This works!
I've had word from SDL Support: their development team is working on an alternative solution.
Hopefully we'll be able to keep our macros AND use MS Word Spell Checker in the future. ;-)

Thanks for all of your contributions!

I forgot to say there, but you should surely backup your original Normal.dotm file before removing any macros, just in case you might need those at some point later. :-)

Anyway, if you do need to have macros in Normal.dotm and want to use Word for spell checking in Trados Studio, you can try the following:

- in Trados Studio / Options / Spelling, attempt to select Word as spell checker; it will start to wait for some communication with Word to see if it works;

- in background (because the instantiated Word is a hidden window, it won't become focused, i.e. may be shown behind other windows!), Word will trigger a modal dialog about macros, allowing you to disable them

- use Alt+Tab key to navigate between windows until you reach the macros dialog and close it;

- the dialog may appear twice, close it again;

- if you do these steps fast enough Trados Studio's waiting for communication with Word will not timeout, and eventually communication will be possible (even if in background Normal.dotm will be loaded without macros); i.e. you'll eventually see Word selected in the combo box in Options!

- now you can use the Editor normally, you can see that Word spell checking works - you can validate by adding a wrong word into the custom dictionary and then check it from Word app;

Note: unfortunately, this setting will only last until the next time you start Trados Studio; during startup, it will "see" that Word communication doesn't work well (the macros dialog appears again), but apparently there is no timeout for the wait there, so even if you are fast to close the dialog, the setting will be set back to HunSpell. But you can follow the original steps again then too; not very nice workaround, but may be good enough in case of emergency.

I hope this helps as well.

Sorin Dolha

I had the same problem while running Studio 2019 SR2.

The culprits were left-over temporary templates with filenames starting with tilde "~" in the templates folder ("%AppData%\Microsoft\Templates\ " on Windows 10).

After deleting all those tilde files, the problem was resolved.

I also found similar left-over tilde files in the Word Startup folder ("%AppData%\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP" in Windows 10) and removed them, just in case.

I hope this helps.

Alaa

Hi, I had the exact same problem with memoQ 9.3. About two weeks ago, the problem stopped, obviously due to a Microsoft update. Is this still happening with Trados Studio, provided that your Windows and Word versions are up-to-date?

Matthias Schauen 

The problem persists. There was an update by MS, the problem disappeared. But then a new update came and the problem appeared again. Now it happens for both Studio and memoQ 9.12.13. While the method described here works for Studio, it does not help with memoQ.

I also have the same problem as Emma Maris. I'm running Office 365 and Trados Studio 2022  17.0.0.11594.  First noticed a couple of weeks ago.

I don't want to wipe all my macros from my normal.dotm file, so I can't try the first workaround Sorin Dolha suggested. The second one, (clicking "disable macros" when the pop-up warning appears) means I can use MS spellchecker in Trados, but I still can't add new words to my custom dictionary. 

Looking forward to a fix for this frustrating problem!

Hi Alaa, long time no talk. I hope you are doing great. Your solution unfortunately did not work with me, even after removing two files that have the tilda in the AppData folder.

Indeed Jerzy and that is a real pain indeed! 

Unfortnately, after a recent office update I became a victim of the same issue, and Hunspell is terrible with Arabic indeed. That is a very crippling issue indeed.