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Great News for Rotten Smellers

Oops, I meant to write “Great News for Rotten Spellers. Silly me. Anyway, I have some great news about some software I downloaded that will help me spell things correctly — and it may help you too. But let me back up a bit. To those who’ve been on the receiving end of instant messenger with me know just how bad my fingers can type. I am one of those people that must have spell check. I can spell just fine, but my blazing fingers don’t check with my brain before adding characters to a correspondence. I make lots of mistakes and must go back to find them. It’s a pain, but I deal with it. But I admit it, I need spell check. So what do I foolishly do the other day? Yep, I accidentally deleted my computer’s spell check utility. Uh oh. Here’s what happened.

I was removing software that I had installed on my machine but I never use. Programs like Dreamweaver and FrontPage were just taking up space so I gave them the axe. All in all I removed maybe a dozen different programs. Well, stupidly I also removed a shared DLL file, “CSAPI3T1.dll,” from this path: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Proof\. That little baby, from what I’ve read, is part of the spell check engine supplied with Word — the part that shares the utility with Outlook Express. I first had to research the problem. Once I leaned about the file I reinstalled it off the CD and rebooted my machine. It didn’t work, other files, unknown files, were also missing. I’m a lousy self-editor… I just had to come up with a fix.

I hit the web in search of solutions. I found a couple of things, but they were third party and I preferred to go with an OEM solution if possible. I went to the Microsoft site in search of answers. They have lots of answers over there, but finding the one needed is another matter. I then swung by the Microsoft support forums. I finally got some answers, but none suited me. They were too complex or vague. Finally one fellow told me about some third party software. He provided two links to third-party sites I had checked out already. Hmm. I took it as a sign.

I ended up installing two programs. I’m very pleased with both, thus I’m here writing about them. First there was a fix for Outlook Express alone, to restore spell check, which I located at MajorGeeks. What I downloaded is called “Spell Checker for OE 2.1″ by Vampireinfo. It’s free and was a simple install. I rebooted my machine and my spell check is back in Outlook Express. Yay. It works great, nothing extra, but I have full functionality.

The second program’s even cooler as it provides a lot of additional functionality which will be especially useful to rotten smellers like myself. It’s this second program that really prompted me to write about this whole experience. The program: it’s Numerit’s “tinySpell” which I downloaded free-of-charge from MegaSpace and boy is it ever cool. Like the other program it downloads and installs quickly and easily. Once done you’ll find a new icon in your system tray (lower right). You can right click for settings, but the thing is ready to go immediately, no reboot needed. Here’s how it works.

You type. Tah-dah. That’s it. Enter text in whatever. It just works. The system tray’s icon is white, but turns yellow and you hear a small beep (default) if there’s a spelling error in whatever you’re writing. Repeat, in whatever you’re writing!. Instant messenger, WordPress (as I write this), GreenBeast CMS, other people’s blogs, Note Pad, it spell checks everything. Bear in mind this could be annoying for some people (or a reminder to others to be more careful) or depending on what you’re doing, but there are settings. Check your spelling on the fly (default) , disable it, or use its tiny spelling field to do a quick check of a word. There’s even a user dictionary you can add to (and easily clean up). However you decide to use it, I’m very impressed with it and wanted to share my find as I think you’ll like it too.

Filed under Wicked Wild Web, Computer Stuff —

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