PC help: Office 2007 killed my spelling checker

Q I recently treated myself to Microsoft Office 2007, to replace an older version of Word that I was using. The upgrade worked fine, but now the spelling checker in Outlook Express has stopped working. I have discovered that it does work if I am writing in French, though! Is there any way for me to get it back – in English?
Rosemary Forster

A This isn’t actually a bug – in fact, believe it or not, it’s a feature of the new Office. Office 2007 includes new dictionary files for English, German and Spanish – used by the spelling checker in both Word and Outlook Express. The Office dictionaries are usually used, as Outlook Express doesn’t have its own dictionary.

Unfortunately, the new dictionaries are not compatible with Outlook Express, so the spelling checker no longer works. As you’ll have noticed, the French dictionary hasn’t been replaced, so it works fine.

Microsoft says it’s not releasing a compatible version, so you’ll have to work around the problem. One way is to write your emails in Word, in which the spelling checker still works. You can then copy the message into Outlook Express to send it. That’s not ideal, though, so you can replace the dictionary with one not made by Microsoft. You can download one here – we haven’t been able to review it, but it has been recommended by some readers.