Jan 20
Spell Check for OCS 2007? Yes!
Tim Allison
After graduating in 1989 I worked as a consultant, then off to Herman Miller as a Network Admin, and finally landed at C/D/H. So ultimately 21 years! Wow!
I enjoy making life better: at home, at play and at work. Technology happens to be one of those areas. In the same manner helping those around me become better through sharing knowledge only results in a better place for us all.
Family is important to me. I am finding my granddaughter (yes, I have three grandchildren) is always on the top of my “love to spend time with” list.
More about Tim
Articles by Tim Allison
If you’re anything like me, you have terrible spelling and have to rely on the automated spell checking tools integrated into many applications. Unfortunately some applications lack this wonderful feature, some, for obvious reasons. Office Communications Server 2007 has changed the way I do business and the level of interaction I have with my many contacts.
As you have probably deduced the OCS client does not have spell check. As I mentioned, it is most likely by design. OCS provides instant messaging, which uses short, cryptic phrases to communicate. However, I use OCS to communicate in mostly full sentences. This causes me grief as I can’t coordinate my typing and I misspell many, many words.
Holding my breath waiting for spell check in the OCS client has left me blue faced.
My research has been ongoing to find a tool to help me out here. Well I finally found THE tool: tinySpell. It is a small utility that allows you to easily and quickly check and correct the spelling in anyWindows application. tinySpell can watch your typing on the fly and alert you whenever it detects a misspelled word. It can also check the spelling of text that you copy to the clipboard. tinySpell installs itself in the system tray for easy access. It comes with an American-English dictionary containing more than 110,000 words.
Settings
Limiting tinySpell
By default tinySpell will enable itself in all applications even if they have their own spell check. However, you can limit what applications tinySpell will “help” you with by changing the applications. This is a very easy setup.
In Action
When you spell something incorrectly you will see an indication of the problem:
You can select the tag or the tinySpell tray applet which will provide you a suggested list of words.
Two variants are available:
- tinySpell: a freeware (totally free – no adware/spyware/nagware/etc.)
- tinySpell+: with more features (buy now – pick your price starting at $10)
You can download it and try it yourself. I suggest you disable the Beep immediately or you will find yourself going slowly crazy whenever you type.