Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
July 1, 2007

Are you an Outlook Express user? If so, you might want to be wary of installing Office 2007. At the least, you'll have to change your ways a bit...

If you install Office 2007 and you use Outlook for your emails, or use anything other than Outlook Express, you won't be affected by this problem.

But, if you use Outlook Express for eamil, you may be in for a shock. Your expensive, new Office 2007 just broke the spell checker that you use in Outlook Express.

That's right, when you install Office 2007, it removes the older spell-check files for English, Spanish and German. It installs new versions -- versions that Outlook Express can not read.

Why does it do this? I believe this was "a marketing decision by Microsoft." Microsoft wants everyone to change to their new operating system, Windows Vista, which doesn't have Outlook Express (it includes a new program called Microsoft Mail). Microsoft was able, by breaking the spell checking in OE, to give you one more little motivation to upgrade to Windows Vista. I doubt that this will actually do anything more than infuriate their customers.

Outlook Express doesn't actually come with a functional spell checker. It has the hooks for one, but the programming isn't part of OE, and the Spell Check function in the Outlook Express menu bar is grayed out. But, if you installed Microsoft Office, then Microsoft Word's spell checker linked into Outlook Express — and, all of a sudden, you had a spell checker in OE.

At this point, you've got a few choices:

1. switch to Outlook for email
2. switch to Eudora, Thunderbird or any of the other third-party email programs
3. find a shareware or freeware spell-checker for Outlook Express
4. forget about spell-checking your emails, or
5. write all your emails in French so you can spell check them

If you don't know French, check out Rocket French so you can use the only spell checker left in Outlook Express with Office 2007 — French.

Or, if you want to learn another language, try Rocket Spanish and Rocket German.

2.  Updates Last Week

Microsoft (operating systems, email, web browser, office suites):
Microsoft releases almost all updates once per month, on the second Tuesday. There were no updates last week.

Firefox (web browser, http://www.mozilla.com, free):
Versions 2.0.0.4 was released on May 30, 2007. The changes includes security fixes and more enhancements and fixes for Windows Vista support.

Firefox is free!

Opera (web browser, http://www.opera.com, free):
Version 9.21 was released on May 21st. This release of a recommended security upgrade, in addition to having several other bug fixes.

Netscape (web browser, http://browser.netscape.com, free):
Version 9.0b1 was released during the week ending June 10, 2007. Lots of new features and fixes - see the release notes

SeaMonkey (web browser, email, HTML editor, newsreader; http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey; free): Version 1.1.2 was released on May 30, 2007. This was primarily a security update and the SeaMonkey team urges users to update promptly.

Eudora (email, http://www.eudora.com):
No update last week. Version 7.1.0.9 was released October 11, 2006. Eudora is now free, with no ads and no "paid mode" option.

Sponsored mode in the earlier versions expired on March 31st — and reverted to the less-functional "Lite" mode. Fortunately, Eudora is very nicely designed. Just upgrade to v7.1.0.9 to get back to Sponsored mode.

Mozilla Thunderbird (email, http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird, free):
Thunderbird version 2.0.0.4 was released on June 14, 2007. Version 2.0.0.4 is primarily a security update.

OpenOffice (office suite — spreadsheet, word processor, presentations, graphics, web design; http://www.openoffice.org; free): Version 2.2.1 was released during the week ending June 16th. This is a security fix and bug fix release, with no new features.

Part 1  | Part 2  | Part 3 | Part 4

Volume 3, Number 3 — Sunday, July 1, 2007

Copyright © 2007 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.