At the request of a Community member (no, neither Jafo nor Zubaz), I'm doing a post about adding a spell checker to help while writing.

Some but not all Windows apps have built-in spell checking of some sort. If you want to add spell checking to all of your apps (or a select group) let's look at tinySpell.

Please note: There is a paid version of this software (tinySpell+) available as well for those who want extra functionality. The tinySpell I am posting about is the free version.

The installation process is simple and straightforward…as soon as you have finished installing tinySpell you will see your new “System Tray Icon”. You can see tinySpell’s “Context Menu” here.

Before going any further you may want to have a look through the settings to make any desired display modifications.

It's very helpful to modify the Spelling Tip options…it will make for a much nicer and easier to read display when you have a spelling error. You can also opt to have a sound when errors are found, and if vision impaired, choose the print size for the correction.

Clicking on the Applications… Command in the Context Menu will bring up the following window. You can really finesse how active tinySpell will be here:

Create a special list of apps that tinySpell will not monitor

Create a custom list of apps that tinySpell will monitor

If you have any particular or unique words that you would like to add to tinySpell’s Dictionary ahead of time you can do that by clicking on the Dictionary… Command in the Context Menu.

Want to check the spelling of a word ahead of time or find that you are just curious about how it is spelled? Click on Open spelling window in the Context Menu to access a special spell check window.

For our example we misspelled “spelling” on purpose…notice that the word has turned red.

Clicking on the Check Mark Button will open a drop-down list with suggested spellings for the word that you are inquiring about. Click on the appropriate listing if you intend to copy and paste the word.

Next, on to Notepad. As I was typing, tinySpell alerted me when I typed the word “app”. You will hear a small default system sound and see a small popup as shown here if tinySpell thinks a word has been misspelled.

The System Tray Icon will also change to a yellow color. You can access the list of suggested spellings by either left clicking on the small popup or the System Tray Icon.

If the word is a properly spelled “abbreviation” (or special/custom) like my word here you can select Add to dictionary.

Going further in my text document I once again purposely misspelled “spelling”…

Left clicking on the popup gave me access to the drop-down list of suggested spellings…

And clicking on the correct spelling automatically inserted it into our document in place of the misspelled word.

As you can see here tinySpell was even monitoring file names when we went to save the document. Very thorough indeed.

So, if your favorite app does not have built-in spell checking, then tinySpell will definitely be a welcome (and very helpful) addition to your Windows system. They offer a portable version as well so you can take it with you to any PC.

You can also add it to your right click menu using this post to guide you.

Hope this has helped!

Download tinySpell

The download link is located approximately half-way down the page.