What to Do When Spell Checker Is Not Working in Windows Mail

All software programs have features which can be enabled or disabled and Windows Mail is no different.  Sometimes these features are accidentally turned off or reconfigured because of fat-fingering (i.e., magically hitting the right combination of keys).

The spell checker feature in Windows Mail is sometimes a problem, and you may see the message, "This feature is no longer available for Spell Checking Please select another in the Spelling Options Dialogue", when you click on Spell Check.

Luckily, there's an easy solution to this problem.  In short, you just need to tell Windows Mail to use the English Dictionary for spell check. To this, follow the steps below:

1. Open Windows Mail and click on TOOLS and then OPTIONS on the menu (this opens a gray window with lots of tabs)
2. Click the SPELLING tab 
3. Under the heading, "Language", make sure ENGLISH is selected (use the pull down arrow to select English you have to).
4. Before OK'ing your selection, it's a good idea to check some other settings while you're at it.
5. Under the heading, "When checking spelling, always ignore", make sure the last two boxes are checked.  
6. If you want Windows Mail to always check for spelling before sending your messages, you can put a checkmark in the top box under settings (Always check spelling before sending).  But this is a personal preferance and not necessary.  
7. When ready, click OK at the bottom of the window.

These steps should fix the problem with spell checker mentioned above.

Messages Disappearing From Inbox

Window Mail (part of Vista) has a feature in it where you can hide messages inbox that you've already read. Why somebody would want to use this feature is still a mystery to me. If you can't see your messages, it's easy to forget about them, which in turn makes it difficult to clean out your inbox.

None the less, if this feature is on, you may notice that after you read a message in your inbox, it mysteriously disappears. If you want to see your messages again, you have to turn this feature off (or rather, configure it to show all your messages).

If you look in the top right corner of Windows Mail (on the blue toolbar), you'll see a button that reads, "SHOW ALL MESSAGES". Click it and a list with more options will drop down.

To see ALL messages in your inbox again, click "SHOW ALL MESSAGES" in the list (highlighted in light blue on the image).

All your messages should reappear. I'm not sure how this feature gets turned on by mistake - but would suspect some sort of fat-fingering of keys. But now you know how to turn it off.

By the way, if you're one of those folks who likes keyboard shortcuts in place of using the nouse, Microsoft has published a list. To view keyboard shortcuts for Windows Mail, click here.