Texstudio Thesaurus is broken

(This answer is extended with pictures in the TeX StackExchange).

By now you have surely solved the problem but for all the people that have the same trouble here is a tested solution in any language. :-)

There are two main steps in solving the problem:

  1. Download the Thesaurus files (.dat and .idx)
  2. Make TexStudio work with the Thesaurus files.

Here we go:

  1. Download the Thesaurus Files

For me the easiest way to get those files is:

  1. Download the LibreOffice/OpenOffice extension .oxt of your desired language's dictionary (check that the extension includes a thesaurus otherwise is useless! ;-))
    For instance for Danish the .oxt file can be found hier http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center/stavekontrolden-danish-dictionary

  2. Unzip the .oxt file and get both thesaurus files (.dat and .idx). Yes, you can unzip a .oxt file! Use your favourite decompression program (e.g. LINUX: unzip, WINDOWS: winzip). On unziping you will see the files. For Danish the thesaurus files are:

  • th_da_DK.dat
  • th_da_DK.idx
  1. Store the thesaurus files in your chosen folder. Now you can choose freely where to store them. My recommendation for LINUX: /usr/share/mythes but something like ~/mythesfolder should also do.

You are ready with the download of the thesaurus files!

  1. Make TexStudio work with the Thesaurus Files

To activate the Thesaurus in TexStudio:

  1. Go to: Options -> Configure TexStudio -> General
  2. Now you are in a dialog with some sections: Appearance, Dictionaries and so on. You see in the section Dictionaries the field Thesaurus Database. Well, this is the nub of the matter you have to input in that field the full path of the .dat thesaurus file (in this step you can ignore the .idx file).
    Example: if you have installed the danish thesaurus on the path /usr/share/mythes you should write here /usr/share/mythes/th_da_DK.dat

That's it!


I found a simpler way, just in case someone is still struggling with this problem. Just put into the synonyms dictionary path the LibreOffice location of the language you want to use. For example for the spanish language and windows OS use
"C:\Program Files\LibreOffice 5\share\extensions\dict-es\th_es_ANY_v2.dat"
and that's it. It works for me