Aspell Dictionary can't be opened

Ensure that the security settings of the "C:/Program Files (x86)/Aspell" folder for the current user allow for modifying and writing.

I had the same issue, and this cleared it right up.

Here is some help to the missing en.pws and en.prepl files. I have no idea why the developers failed to provide this simple solution for windows.

1. Go to the directory of "Aspell", which should have been installed as a sub-directory of NotePad++.
2. Right click in the main Aspell directory, choose "New" then choose "text document".
3. Rename the new text document as "en.pws" (without quotes) removing the "txt" extension, press enter key.
4. Repeat, make another new text document and rename it to "en.prepl".
5. Open up en.pws in NotePad++

6. copy and paste the following into en.pws, exactly as below;

   personal_ws-1.1 en 2
   µÄ
   

   (Note: the µÄ symbols are below, on a new line below personal_ws-1.1 en 2)

7. Go to the Menu in NotePad++, click "Encoding" and make sure that "Encoding ANSI" is chosen (Dot beside it).

8. Save file and close file.
9. Open the en.prepl file in NotePad++

10. Copy and paste the following into that file;

    personal_repl-1.1 en 0 
    

11. Same, make sure the "Encode ANSI" is chosen.

12. Save and close file.

Note: you must close each file before using NotePad++ Spell Checker and "learn" button. Else it corrupts the file and you have to redo it.

NotePad++ will now work and you can save words to the ".pws" file.

Possible locations of GNU Aspell custom words file:

%localappdata%\VirtualStore\Program Files\Aspell
%programfiles%\Aspell

For English for example the custom words file is named en.pws (file name = language code) and the very first line must look like:

personal_ws-1.1 en 286

Where "en" is the file name (=language) and 286 are the number of words (lines) in that file. Last line must is always empty. GNU Aspell does not allow words ending with a number (e.g. Beta1). If you have such a word in your pws file Aspell or the application that uses it (e.g. Notepad++) may crash/hang ...

You may have to delete your en.pws file and create a new one (e.g. using Notepad++). File format as described above, otherwise GNU Aspell will fail to work.