Is there an auto-correct spell checker available on Thunderbird like the exceptionally useful one in Microsoft Office?
When I used Microsoft Office I made great use of the auto-correct facility within the Spellchecker, especially for correcting frequently made mistakes, e.g. no capital letter or double capitals at the start of a proper noun, or for typing a single letter to deliver a frequently used word, e.g. type "c" and "Charles" appears on screen. I can find nothing similar with Thunderbird.
All Replies (6)
There is an add-on that performs some of these functions, but the installation can be a bit complex. Look here for a full discussion:
Thank you sfhowes, but the business of installing such a cure is beyond me. I echo the remark made by emaharg: "It is such an obvious and useful tool, with all that huge Mozilla support base, cannot someone just update or rewrite the thing so it works? I would gladly pay a couple of dollars for it, and I am sure many thousands of others would too!"
Even users who have the existing add-on in a working state find it somewhat deficient, and sometimes annoying, which suggests that it would require considerable effort to produce an effective add-on that fulfills this seemingly simple function.
Thank you. I think I must accept that there isn't an effective autocorrect that I could use. I'll carry on correcting my own mistakes by hand.
Regards
As sfhowes said, it is deficient. It insists on applying unwanted fixes and there is no easy way to temporarily disable or inhibit it. This wouldn't be so bad if you could add your preferences to it, but it refuses certain combinations. For instance, if you use i.e. or e.g. it will not accept that the periods are part of the abbreviation, and treats them as the ends of sentences, consequently capitalising the following letter. And it won't accept i.e. or e.g. as correction text. I have similar problems with the idiot auto correct on the Android tablet I'm using right now, but at least I can coerce it into doing what I want. The Thunderbird add-in is not so amenable.
Surely there must be hundreds of thousands of people who would use Thunderbird in preference to Word/Outlook if there was a viable Autocorrect feature. For me, it is sufficiently important for me to have to abandon Thunderbird in search of a mail service that does have Autocorrect... Certainly I, like Charles_Nisbet, would be happy to pay several dollars for said software/add-on.... I live in hope that our saviour will come!