We have been talking a lot about the Internet and responsibility lately around the house. Both of my girls play online at Disney and Nickelodeon and a few other selected sites. They are very good about not clicking on anything that needs approval - they always ask “what do I push?” when a security window pops up. With them getting older, we decided they could handle the responsibility of an email account.

I set them up with Outlook Express thinking it would offer them the basics and it could be customized by user account. Creating their account and defining the layout was no problem. My youngest was very excited and immediately wanted to send messages to her friends and family. She logged in and started typing. Before sending the message we clicked the spell check icon and nothing happened. I was confused. There was a spell check in OE, wasn’t there?

I went to check the settings thinking maybe I had to turn on the spell check. No. Spell check was on — for French! Huh? There were no other language dictionaries available. After some searching, I discovered that when you upgrade to Office 2007 all of the old dictionary files are deleted. Never mind the programs that USE those files. They are gone. Vanished. Totally not available.

Well, that wasn’t the answer I wanted. The suggestions from the Microsoft site were to purchase a 3rd party spell checker from one of their approved vendors. Now, the spell check is nice to have but not something I’m going to pay for when they shouldn’t have deactivated it in the first place. Thank goodness I stumbled across Joe Duck’s blog entry when searching for alternatives. He recommended Spell Checker for OE. The link he gives is to the snapfiles site, but the download wouldn’t launch for me. I found the program over at MajorGeeks and downloaded from there.

After installing the Spell Checker, I tested it in OE. Voila, the spelling errors are flagged and alternative words are suggested. I still can’t figure out how MS didn’t see this big “OOPS” when they released Office 2007. Anyone imagining Homer Simpson right now? D’OH!

Tags: Internet