Which English variant dictionary are you looking to use? English (USA), or something else? I've found on Fedora 20 that LibreOffice offers the option of non-US variants, e.g. English (Canada), but if I change to that, spell checking stops working. That is, it reports no spelling errors were found, when in fact it really wasn't able to find an English (Canada) dictionary, I suspect (as I tested with typos that are glaringly obvious).

From looking at forums, the first thing to try would be this:

In the LibreOffice menu bar, select: Tools -> Language -> For All Text -> English (USA)

(That's taken from here: http://en.libreofficeforum.org/node/3068 )

If that works, and you want American English spellings, you're done. If that works, but you want another English dictionary, it's likely that that particular dictionary isn't installed. I don't know offhand how dictionaries are bundled for LibreOffice on Linux distros.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

Here are Ubuntu-specific details:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/203727/libreoffice-spell-checker-doesnt-work

Please head over to to our ask site to ask how to use dictionaries as they do currently work so this is a user question on how to correctly use the dictionaries. 

Head here: http://ask.libreoffice.org/ and someone will happily help you out :)

Marking as WORKSFORME as dictionaries do work (they are currently broken in 4.3 but that's another issue ;) )

Thanks for reporting

1. "English, Australia UTF-8" is 'Fully installed' in Linux Mint's 'Language Settings'.

2. Paragraphs are set to 'English (Australia)' and showing in the status bar of LibreOffice Writer.

3. The 'Spelling' dialog only shows "English (USA)", even though "English Australia UTF-8" is 'Fully installed' (see point 1)

4. Hence, English does not work for variant of English (USA) spelling with Linux Mint 18.

5. Hence, marking status as NEW as description reproducible with:
Version: 5.1.4.2
Build ID: 1:5.1.4-0ubuntu1
CPU Threads: 2; OS Version: Linux 4.4; UI Render: default; 
Locale: en-AU (en_AU.UTF-8)

Óvári: do you have the package myspell-en-au installed on your system? (I believe that's the relevant package for Mint, though I don't use that distro.) If not, it won't matter what your regional settings are, the actual dictionary file LibreOffice requires isn't present. (Another way you can tell is by going to Tools->Language->For Selection and pulling down the Language menu. It will list various languages and their regional variants. If English (Australia) doesn't have a tick mark beside it, it means the dictionary isn't installed on your system.)

In any case, a missing dictionary isn't a LibreOffice bug, at most it's an issue with the Linux distribution packaging it. Well, I would argue there may be a bug involved, namely that if LibreOffice can't find a dictionary for the language settings of a document, it doesn't warn the user. That's already reported separately as bug 75734.

Created attachment 126883 [details]
Languages installed on Linux Mint

(In reply to David H. Gutteridge from comment #5)
> Óvári: do you have the package myspell-en-au installed on your system? (I
> believe that's the relevant package for Mint, though I don't use that
> distro.) If not, it won't matter what your regional settings are, the actual
> dictionary file LibreOffice requires isn't present. (Another way you can
> tell is by going to Tools->Language->For Selection and pulling down the
> Language menu. It will list various languages and their regional variants.
> If English (Australia) doesn't have a tick mark beside it, it means the
> dictionary isn't installed on your system.)

See attached screenshot from Linux Mint. The language files are ‘Fully installed’.

> In any case, a missing dictionary isn't a LibreOffice bug, at most it's an
> issue with the Linux distribution packaging it. Well, I would argue there
> may be a bug involved, namely that if LibreOffice can't find a dictionary
> for the language settings of a document, it doesn't warn the user. That's
> already reported separately as bug 75734.

Thank you for indicating this bug report.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 75734 ***

Regarding the screenshot attached, that's not germane to LibreOffice. The real question is whether LibreOffice has what it needs dictionary-wise, which I've already mentioned how to check in this bug report. A language pack for a desktop environment being "fully installed" does not necessarily correlate to LibreOffice having what it requires. If it's expected that Mint does provide a dictionary for LibreOffice (or anything else using Hunspell) when it claims a language pack is "fully installed", that would be a bug with their distribution, not with the Document Foundation.

(In reply to David H. Gutteridge from comment #8)
Thank you for your comment. The English (Australia) spell checker now works. Here is a list of what was done if someone else also needs the instructions:
1. Linux Mint Menu → Package Manager
2. Search: myspell-en-au
3. Right click on package: myspell-en-au
4. Click: Mark for installation
5. Click: Apply
6. Click: Apply
7. Click: Close

As you mentioned this is a bug with the Linux Mint distributions, a message was placed at:
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3083
Hopefully the bug in the Linux Mint distributions will be fixed so that the above points will not be required.

Thank you

Please lock this issue. Thank you

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 75734 ***