| Spell Check Issues | Common Problems | Language Support |
| Language Reg Files | Third Party Spellers | Mismatched DLL and LEX Files |
| Spell Check Solution for IMN | Troubleshooting Using "Add' in Spell Check |
Internet Mail and News makes use of the 32-bit shared spelling engine, if it is found. Works 4.0 and the Office 95 applications are some of the applications that install the 32-bit shared spelling engine today. (Other applications, such as WordPerfect, MS Word Version 6.0 (or less), etc. do not have a 32-bit public API for their speller, so IMN cannot take advantage of it).
If Spelling is not available, the "Check spelling" command is grayed and the spelling options tab does not even show.
IMN determines if spelling is available by trying to load both the dictionary and the spelling engine for the language that the user is using. This can be overridden with a .REG file. The registry key that is used is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Shared Tools \ Proofing Tools \ Spelling \ langid \ Normal. ("langid" is replaced by the appropriate 4-digit language ID. For example, US English is "1033"). Two values are at this key location: "Dictionary," which contains a full path to the dictionary file for that language (on my computer, this is C:\Program Files \ Common Files \ Microsoft Shared \ Proof \ MSSP2_en.lex), and "Engine," which contains a full path to the spelling DLL (on my computer, the path is the same as for the dictionary file but the file name is MSSP232.dll).
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If the key above, based on the appropriate language ID, cannot be found, then spelling is completely disabled on the assumption that it is not available. This means that either spelling isn't installed, or that IMN is looking for a language that isn't installed. If the latter is the case, you can use one of the attached .REG files to tell IMN what language to use.
If either the Dictionary or Engine values are missing from the registry under the determined language, spelling is usually offered but does not work. In this case, you will need to add Dictionary or Engine as a key, whichever is required. Then, you must identify the path to the appropriate file (i.e., the .lex or .dll file). Finally, you must type in that path as the "Value Data" by double clicking on the Dictionary or Engine key, whichever one you just created.
If the language determined from the steps above does not match the language of the dictionary installed, either install the right dictionary, change the locale of Windows, or run one of the attached REG files to fix it.
If either of the files pointed to by the above values cannot be opened, spelling will be enabled but will fail.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Software \ Microsoft \ Shared Tools \ Proofing Tools \ Custom Dictionaries contains a value ("1") that has a path to the user's custom dictionary (on my computer, this is C:\Windows \ Program Files \ Common Files \ Microsoft Shared \ Proof \ Custom.dic). If this has a bad pathname in it, then spelling will fail to initialize correctly.
For Works 4.0 (Works for Win95), you may need to make a minor Registry change to fix an install bug so that spell check will work with other products (Exchange/Messaging and IMN) in addition to Works. In short, you actually may need to add a Custom Dictionaries key to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Software \ Microsoft \ Shared Tools \ Proofing Tools. After adding the key, add a new string value to the key of 1 and set the value data to "path to custom dictionary"\custom.dic. Again, on my computer this is C:\Program Files \ Common Files \ Microsoft Shared \ Proof \ Custom Dictionaries \ custom.dic. This installation bug is fixed in Works 4.0a. For additional information, read Knowledge Base Article Q137178.
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In General. For information regarding enabling multi language support in IMN, read Knowledge Base Article Q154654.
Accessing More than One Language. Currently, both MS Internet Mail and MS Internet News only allow the user to access one language. According to the IMN Team, capability for more than one language will be built into the next version of Mail and News. However, until that occurs, the best work around as follows:
Put your preferred language .REG files in a convenient location, such as the start menu.
To check French, run the French Reg file and then check spelling.
Do likewise to check English in a message.
Cyrillic Characters. For information regarding the fact that Russian (Cyrillic) messages may be displayed incorrectly in Internet Mail, read Knowledge Base Article Q154342. Also, please be advised that you should only use the "Cyrillic (KO18-R)" character set for sending messages in Russian. For all other languages that use Cyrillic characters (Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Bulgarian), you should use the "Cyrillic (Windows)" character set.
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Attached below are all of the registration files that I have seen posted in the the Mail and News newsgroups. Right click on one or more of the links that you would like to download and click on "Save target as." Once you have saved the registry files on your hard drive, use File | Import from inside the Registry Editor and browse and point to the language .reg file that you would like to import.
| Australian English Reg File | Dutch Reg File | French Reg File |
| German Reg File | Greek Reg File | Italian Reg File |
| Polish Reg File | Spanish Reg File | Swedish Reg File |
| UK English Reg File | US English Reg File |
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Even if the Dictionary and Engine values appear be in place, the paths to them appear to be correct in the registry and you can select spelling, you may still get a message that 'The spelling checker could not be started. Some components are missing or incorrectly configured.' In this case, your *.dll and *.lex files may be mismatched. For 1033 (US English), MS has encountered one problem where the mssp232.dll would not work with the mssp_am.lex. However, when the Dictionary key was revised to point to mssp2_en.lex and the Engine key was revised to point to mssp232.dll, the ability to engage spelling resumed.
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Having now personally helped over 400 IMN users enable spell check inside IMN, I can confidently say that if you meet the criteria set forth below, the solution offered solves more than 90 percent of the spell check problems that IMN users encounter. So, here goes:
First and foremost, you have a 32-bit speller installed, i.e., you have Office for Win95, one of the Office for Win95 applications, e.g., Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Works for Win95 or FrontPage installed on your hard drive. Without a 32-bit speller, we can't get IMN to do much for you.
After opening Windows Explorer and using Tools | Find | Files to locate mssp2_en.lex, mssp232.dll and custom.dic on your hard drive (note that you may have two custom.dic files), you discover that all of those reside in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Proof. If mssp232.dll and mssp2_en.lex are in that folder, but custom.dic is elsewhere, simply make a copy of your custom.dic file and place it in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Proof folder. Also, if for some reason mssp232.dll or mssp2_en.lex are not in that folder, make sure that you copy them to that location. If you can't find a copy of a custom,dic file, download the custom.dic file that I have created for you and put it in that folder (you'll need to unzip it -- that's the easiest way to facilitate the download)..
Now that each of mssp2_en.lex, mssp232.dll and custom.dic all are in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Proof folder, download USEnglish from the Language Reg Files above and SpellFix.zip. The file has been zipped up to facilitate downloading. After downloading and extracting the file, simply save both files someplace where you can easily access them again.
Open Windows Explorer and go to the USEnglish.reg file that you just saved. Right click on the USEnglish.reg file and select "Merge." This will install the SpellLangID string value of 1033 (US English) into your IMN registry files (just in case it is not already there). This is simply a precautionary measure and will make sure that IMN tells spelling what language it wants to use. Installing this key alone fixes approximately 30 percent of all IMN spelling problems.
Open Windows Explorer and go to the SpellFix.reg file that you just saved. Right click on the reg file and select "Merge." This will make sure that you do not have mismatched *.dll and *.lex files and also ensure that the path to your Custom Dictionaries key is correct. To the extent that one or more of these keys are already appropriately in your registry, merging Spell Fix will not adversely affect those entries.
There you have it. Provided that you met the criteria specified above, your speller now should work. If it does not, I need to review your spelling related registry files. For me to do that, you will need to open Regedit (if you have not opened it before, either go to Run and type in "Regedit" or go to your C:\Windows folder, locate regedit.exe and double click on it). As a warning, don't make any changes in Regedit unless you are familiar with navigating through your system registry. However, even if you haven't. if you simply follow my instructions everything will be fine. Open Regedit (located in your C:\Windows folder) or go to the Start Menu, select Run and type in "regedit." Having opened Regedit, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Proofing Tools, highlight Proofing Tools, select Registry | Export Registry Files from the pull down menu in the upper left corner of the window, assign your name to the file and send it to me via e-mail.
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If you are unable to get spell check to work inside IMN (no Win95 32-bit speller, etc.), a variety of third party spellers are available from Window95.com and Tucows.
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Some users have reported that spell check works, but when they click on "ADD," it never adds the word to their custom dictionary. TO fix this problem, go to Windows Explorer and use Tools | Find | Files on "custom.dic" to see if you have more than one custom.dic file on your system (many Win 95 upgrade users still have a MSApps\Proof folder in their Windows directory and the Custom.dic file is being updated there instead of the expected location in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Proof). If you have more than one, delete the one that is least current. Moreover, if your most current custom.dic file is not in C:\Program Files\...\Proof, move it to the Proof folder and see if that then shows words as you add them. If that does not do the trick, open Regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Shared Tools \ Proofing Tools \ Custom Dictionaries and click on the string value 1 in the right pane. Check to make sure that the "value data" shows the correct path to your custom.dic file (which now should be in C:\Program Files \ Common Files \ Microsoft Shared \ Proof). This should do it.
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