Tinyspell will correct your spelling in any Windows program

First, go to the tinyspell website, then scroll down to find and click the Download Now button alongside the ‘tinySpell (totally free)’ label. If the File Download Security Warning dialogue box appears, click Save and then choose a location for the file. Firefox users should select Save File to save the download to Firefox’s default download folder. Now locate and double-click the downloaded file and work through the installation wizard, accepting the default options unless you have reason to do otherwise. Once Tinyspell is installed and running, it displays an icon in the Notification Area of the Taskbar. This is white when no spelling mistakes have been detected and yellow when Tinyspell thinks errors are present. To see it in action, launch an application that lacks built-in spell-checking – such as Notepad – and type in an intentionally misspelled word.

Tinyspell checks each word when the spacebar is pressed. If it detects a mistake, it will bleep and display the word in red above the suspect error. Click this red version of the word to see a pop-up including several suggestions for the correct spelling. Click the correct version or press the corresponding number key on the keyboard. This will insert the corrected word in place of the misspelt one. If none of the suggested words are correct, click More.

The menu changes to show additional suggestions. Select one of these or choose Back to return to the suggestions. If none fits, click Cancel to manually change the spelling or to ignore the flagged word. If the flagged word was in fact correct – a name, say – then choose Add to dictionary. This saves the current spelling to Tinyspell’s dictionary, so that it won’t get flagged in future but may be provided as a suggested correction. ▼

To change Tinyspell’s settings, right-click its icon in the Notification Area. Choose Disable tinySpell to temporarily switch it off (or Enable tinySpell to switch it back on). It’s also possible to set those applications in which Tinyspell can do its work. First, launch the program to be excluded. Now right-click Tinyspell’s Notification Area icon and choose Applications. Set Tinyspell as normally enabled and click Add to select a program to exclude from Tinyspell. Click OK. To change other options, choose Settings from the Notification Area menu.

The Settings dialogue box provides a number of possible alterations and optimisations. Click to remove the tick from the ‘Check spelling on the fly’ box, for instance, and Tinyspell’s ability will be restricted to text copied into the Windows Clipboard. To stop Tinyspell emitting a beep each time it spots a mistake, remove the tick from the ‘Beep on error’ box. Use the options in the Spelling tip section to set the size and colour of the flagged word. The Hotkeys options can be used to create keyboard shortcut to several of these features. Click OK to save any changes.

Finally, it’s possible to conjure up Tinyspell’s dictionary at any time. Right-click the program’s Notification Area icon and choose ‘Open spelling window’. Type a word into the Tinyspell Dictionary window to check it, or to view spelling suggestions. Alternatively, add new words by typing them here and clicking Add. To remove an existing word, select it from the custom list and click Remove.