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The Problem
I have had a rather large number of people come to me recently with a problem regarding the dictionary in Outlook Express. For some it has randomly dissappeared and we can’t get it back, for others they have installed Office 2007 and it has removed the English dictionary changed the dictionary to French!

For some there is an easy fix by replacing a missing file, for others running a system file check (sfc /scannow) has done the job. But those two don’t seem to work for everyone!

Windows Mail is the new version of Outlook Express which is included in Windows Vista, it doesn’t come with an English UK dictionary at all, so essentially people using Windows Mail are in the same boat!

The Solution
With many clients suffering from this I felt I had to come up with some sort of solution. Which I seem to have done, nothing particularly mind blowing, but it works! It does however involve you changing your Email Client.

If you download Mozilla’s Email Client named Thunderbird and install that you will notice that it doesn’t come with a dictionary at all, but there is a link to get more dictionaries online. FANTASTIC! Download the dictionary and then open Thunderbird, Tools>Add-Ons and add the download dictionary, the only thing left to do is restart Thunderbird and write your email. Sorted

Conculsion
Ok, so it isn’t the most ideal solution, but it works and if having an English Dictionary is important then it is cheaper than going and buying the full blown Outlook 2007. The only other free alternative is to get an email account with hotmail, live or Gmail and they have dictionaries built in as well.

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Spam is a huge problem for everyone and while we will never get rid of all of it there are little things that help! So here are a few:

1. Never Respond to Spam, this tells the sender that your address is active.
2. Block Images: Spammers can tell if an image was displayed in an email so if possible turn off image display on your email client for suspect messages.
3. Don’t forward chain letters – it is just a way of collecting email addresses. For more information on this read here.
4. Don’t click links – much like the images, if you click the links it tells the spammer your address is active.
5. Never respond to an email requesting information – if a company like ebay or your bank requests for you to confirm your details then it is most probably a hoax. But if you want to be 100% sure then log-in to the respective site in your normal way (going direct to the site!) and then see if you have a message from them.

Well there we go, my top 5 quick tips on stopping or avoiding spam. I hope it helps