Add Spell Checking to Internet Explorer

How can I spell-check text from within Internet Explorer?

There are times when you need to perform spell-checking operations from within an Internet Explorer window. These may include the following:

  • Entering feedbacks and responses in online forms

  • Posting messages on bulletin boards, blogs and forums

  • performing free-text searches in search engines

and more.

One old method is to enter your text into an open Word document (or to a new e-mail message) and then use Word’s built-in spell checker to check your text for errors.

However, this method requires you to prepare a new Word document (or a new e-mail message and so on) beforehand, thus making the entire process quite slow.

Here come 2 solutions I’ve found on the Internet. Both are freeware, so feel free to use them as much as you like.

Method #1 – ieSpell – A Spell Checker for Internet Explorer

ieSpell is a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks text input boxes on a webpage. It should come in particularly handy for users who do a lot of web-based text entry (e.g. web mails, forums, blogs, diaries). Even if your web application already includes spell checking functionality, you might still want to install this utility because it is definitely much faster than a server-side solution. Plus you get to store and use your personal word list across all your applications, instead of maintaining separate ones on each application.

The program installs as a new button in the IE toolbar (as well as a new menu item under "Tools") – after filling in a form, just hit the ieSpell button and it pops up a dialog, similar to the MS Word spell check.

iespell small iespell2 small

Note: ieSpell is free for personal use only. Commercial use requires a separate license. See creator’s site for more information.

Current version is v2.4.0 (build 428) – download from HERE (1.96mb)link out ico

Method #2 – Spell Check  .VBS script

This script is designed to be used exclusively with Internet Explorer 5.x by adding an item called Spelling to your right-click context menu. The main *problem* with this script is (in my opinion) that it requires that Microsoft Word and version 5.1 of the Windows Scripting Host be installed on your computer. Once those two criteria are met though, installing and using this program is extremely simple and easy.

Download the IE Context Menu Speller to a temporary directory in the same partition on which your Windows installation resides. Unzip the contents of the zip file into this same directory. Double click Install_Spell_It.vbs to install the program. When you restart Internet Explorer you’ll find a new item in your right-click context menu. Highlight any text and then right-click it. Select Spelling from the context menu. The program will launch your Microsoft Word’s spell checker utility allowing you to make corrections to the text.

iespell3 small iespell4 small

While you may spell check any text, this program is most useful when correcting editable text in applications such as a forum post text field. When you’re done, simply press Ctrl+V to paste the corrected text from the clipboard, where the program stores it, into your editable field.

Download from HERE (4kb)link out ico

Any more freeware tools you know about? Share them with me and I’ll post them on the site smtp.

Related articles

You might also want to read the following related articles:

Links

http://www.iespell.comlink out ico

http://www.pcnineoneone.com/tweaks/scripts8.htmllink out ico