American Heritage Dictionary: Office Edition

By American Heritage

Book Overview

Based on the authoritative American Heritage? Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition, the Office Edition has been completely updated; every single entry has been reviewed and revised as... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395699568
• ISBN13: 9780395699560
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Length: 960 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.0" x 1.5" x 4.3"

Customer Reviews

Instructions for using with Office XP

Although this CD-ROM predates Office XP, it can be made to work correctly with it. 1. Locate the file named AHDLookup.dot, on the CD or on your hard drive, if you have copied the data to your hard drive. Select (highlight) this file and type Ctrl-C to copy it. 2. IF YOU HAVE WINDOWS 95, 98, or NT: Paste AHDLookup in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office 10\Startup. Restart your computer.3. IF YOU HAVE WINDOWS ME, 2000, or XP: Paste AHDLookup in C:\Documents and Settings\[your username]\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\Startup. Restart your computer.

Tricky to download to your hard drive

Excellent dictionary on CD. There are no directions as to how to download to the hard drive, but one call to customer service and Molly will email you the directions (even I could follow them.) I have both this dictionary as well as Webster's Unabridged on my hard drive. This makes it easy to compare and constrast definitions. But the AHD is far superiour when it comes to word roots.

Excellent Product

I was looking for an on-line dictionary which could be used with Microsoft Word. Unfortunately, most of the dictionary reviews were negative for nearly all of the available products. I went with the American Heritage Dictionary and I have not been disappointed. So far, the complaints listed in the other reviews seem unjustified. I loaded the entire dictionary onto my hard drive (entire directory is about 450 Meg), and the dictionary is working like a charm. In Microsoft Word you simply right click on any word and select American Heritage Dictionary. The definition appears on the screen immediately (along with an optional vocal pronunciation and the etymology of most words). This product is an excellent tool if you are in need of an on-line dictionary.

Advice for using this exceptional dictionary on CD

I am responding to a reviewer who had a difficult time trying to load the CD onto his hard drive, so he wouldn't have to have the CD in the disk drive while using it.The instructions are clearly written, and easily accessible, in the help contents, but I thought I would list them below anyway: You simply copy the entire CD into a folder on your hard drive and run SETUP.EXE from there by double-clicking on it. This will allow you to run The American Heritage® Dictionary from your hard drive without having to insert the CD. (Please note: This will require 600 Megabytes of disk space.)If you want to use The American Heritage® Dictionary with Microsoft® Office (and this is a wonderfully helpful feature):You can use The American Heritage® Dictionary on CD to look up words in the following Microsoft® Office 97 and Microsoft® Office 2000 applications: Microsoft® Word, Microsoft® PowerPoint, Microsoft® Access, and Microsoft® Excel.To look up the definition of a word while you are working in one of these applications, just right-click on the word. The drop-down menu that results will contain the item "American Heritage® Dictionary". If you click on this menu item, The American Heritage® Dictionary application will appear, showing the dictionary entry for the word.If you want to look up a phrase (for example, "give away"), you should select all of the desired text before you right-click.Exception: In Microsoft® Excel, you can select an entire cell and invoke the Dictionary by right-clicking, but you cannot do so while editing the cell.

The best paperback dictionary yet.

This dictionary is one of the most informative dictionaries of the English tongue (both in Britain and America) I have come across so far. Other dictionaries such as Britain's Chambers dictionary offer merely the definitions. The American Heritage Dictionary, however, offers the words' definitions, etymologies, and various pronunciations and spellings. In addition, this dictionary is also encyclopedic, succinctly explaining about certain people, places, events, et cetera. Moreover, many of these encyclopedic explanations are accompanied by small photographs. I do question, however, the title "The American Heritage Dictionary". Many of the words in this dictionary are also spoken in other countries such as Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ireland. Indeed, there are Americanisms included in this dictionary. But one may also find these Americanisms in British dictionaries such as Chambers. Nevertheless, as a whole the American Heritage dictionary will be beneficial to English speakers of all nationalities.