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Running System File Checker or downloading the newest IE and Outlook Express may help to fix a broken spell checker in Outlook Express.

Outlook Express' spell check broke when I upgraded to XP, how do I fix it?

I'd simply repair Internet Explorer, of which Outlook Express is a part. For Windows XP that means running the System File Checker. Alternately, simply installing the latest and greatest IE and Outlook Express should also do.

Article C2115 - July 11, 2004

Leo Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed. After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.

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36 Comments

My computer won't take Snapfile either, same error. Any help here?

BTW: this makes absolutely no sense; you upgrade a MSFT product to more errors?

Posted by: Kim at January 6, 2009 9:22 AM

For Marsha, and anyone else whose OE spell check is now French only, this is a consequence of upgrading to Office 2007 (there may be other causes I suppose, but this is what happened to me and a host of others). There's a simple solution, and here it is with first some background.
MS issued a new mail client (Windows Mail I think it’s called) with Vista, and now have a freely downloadable ‘Windows Live Mail’ which is to be the replacement for Outlook Express & Windows Mail. There will be no more OE upgrades.
When you install WLM your accounts (including Hotmail, GMail, Yahoo), contacts and mail folders are automatically imported from OE, and all in all it’s much slicker than OE… and *spell check works*. All the reviews I read recommended it, so I tried it… I’ve only had it a day, but so far so good.

Posted by: Hasan at February 15, 2009 2:13 PM

Thanks for the information on OE Spell check only speaking French. I already found out why but not how to fix it. I hope this solution works for me.

Posted by: Faye at February 24, 2009 8:46 AM

Hello

try it
Spell Checker for OE 2.1
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=2952

Posted by: rani at March 13, 2009 12:24 AM

I just ran into this and I have a question. I'd be willing to try this "Windows Live" mail if someone who has tried it can tell me if message filters or rules can be set up to direct email into specific folders.
Can it do this?? If not, WLM is a useless hunk of code for me.

btw: the spellchecker in OE is now working for me thanks to the pointer to that download.

It appears that Windows Live Mail has the same message rule engine that Outlook Express had.
- Leo
07-May-2009

Posted by: Tom at May 5, 2009 5:06 PM
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