Maybe -- I don't have Thunderbird on the computer I'm using at the moment.

Please check out the discussion of "Composition" Options in this thread: How do I check my spelling, it doesn't seem to do anything.

Does that still work?

Yes, there is a checkbox exactly for the settings I'm looking for: Tools > Options > Composition > Spelling. Thanks!

That link also mentioned to check if the dictionary is enabled. Good thought. However, the instructions: "'Tools' > 'Addons' OR 'Menu icon' > 'Addons' click on the last icon on left side - hover over tooltip says 'Dictionaries' You might need to enable a dictionary", might be for some older version of Thunderbird. The "last icon on left side" (not very explicit) of Add-ons is 'Plugins'. Clicking on this gives me a list of "Never Activated", mostly Microsoft plugins. There is no "tooltip" icon or link anywhere on the screen that I can see.

Any idea how I can see if I have a dictionary enabled? I assumed tbird came with a dictionary.

The simplest check that comes to mind is that when you provoke a spell check, it will indicate to you what language it is using. If it is already marking spelling mistakes, then you do have a dictionary installed. The default is US English.

Zenos said

The simplest check that comes to mind is that when you provoke a spell check, it will indicate to you what language it is using. ...

Yes, it does indicate the language when doing the spell check and it is set to "English/United States".

also (thanks to jscher2000) I did find the checkbox for setting spell-check at send-time in Tools > Options > Composition > Spelling

Almost there. Next big problem: When I click send and do the spell check, it finds and lets me correct the the misspelled words, but then it magically goes on from there and finds all kinds of phantom words: panose, mso (several occurances), charset, swiss (?), MsoNormal (several), li, qformat ... etc. (not exhaustive).

What's all this?

More info: It's finding these oddly spelled words in my signature. If I delete the signature from the message, these words are not found.

My signature is an html file. In searching the html source I do find strings like "panose", "charset" set.

So, since Thunderbird does allow html: "Attach the signature from a file instead (text, HTML, or image)", how can I tell it NOT to spellcheck the html signature?

Surely everyone who has ever specified an html signature has run into this as html directives don't generally make it into any dictionary -- nor would I want them to! (If I use "panose" in a sentence, I do want the spell checker to find it)

Well, it looks like this has been a known bugzilla bug (Bug 223440 - Spell checker checks signature) since 2003, 13 years! Apparently no one in Tbird land uses html signatures? In any case after 13 years, it appears that no one is interested in fixing this.

Does anyone have any work-around suggestions?

I don't know why the spell checker cares about the HTML source, but you could clean that up. Office is notorious for generating verbose HTML because it expects that you will want to edit it in Office again and therefore it includes lots of information no other program needs. If you don't have a good sense of how to do that, do you want to post the signature HTML on a shared site like Pastebin? You can replace sensitive parts with XXX, YYY, etc.

In support of what jscher2000 posted, I see this problem but only when the message has been contaminated by Outlook.

Zenos said

In support of what jscher2000 posted, I see this problem but only when the message has been contaminated by Outlook.

I did as jscher2000 suggested and re-composed a clean signature html. True, it was very contaminated: 25K and 505 lines containing clearly MS specific tags and attributes. I reduced that to a barebones 36 lines.

Closer, but still stumbling on "td" and "px".

I think it would be uncommon for an html signature to not contain at least "td". This bug serves as an indicator to me that Thunderbird, as good as it is, hasn't yet invaded the corporate universe. Spell checking the signature like this would not be tolerated. Too bad because lots of my clients are looking for Outlook alternatives. I repeat my call for something to be done.

Also see my bugzilla comments: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=223440

I don't understand why the HTML is checked in signatures but not the rest of the message. That, at least, sounds like something that could be solved without creating a whole new way to ignore text content. Of course, I'm not a software developer...

My ability to read C++ is limited, but when I look at the Skip function here --

http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-esr38/source/mozilla/editor/composer/nsComposeTxtSrvFilter.cpp - line 22

-- it seems the spell checker should ignore content inside HTML elements that match any of the following (other attributes might also be present, the code doesn't appear to care):

<blockquote type="cite"> <span mozquote="true"> <span _class="mozsignature"> <script> <textarea> <select> <map> <table _class="moz-email-headers-table">

I don't have Thunderbird on this machine to test out whether those really are skipped, but it seems to provide some options for cordoning off signatures from checking by taking advantage of existing filters.

As for checking the HTML itself, I still don't know what could cause that.

jscher2000 said

I don't understand why the HTML is checked in signatures but not the rest of the message. That, at least, sounds like something that could be solved without creating a whole new way to ignore text content. Of course, I'm not a software developer...

Yes, seems like something that could be easily solved -- as I've said in my bugzilla post.

Meanwhile, I've eliminated the checking of the "td" tag and "px" attributes in the signature html by making them uppercase. Most spell checkers I've used ignore all uppercase words assuming they are acronyms or proper names.

I'll check out that C code when I get a chance. I used to be fluent! Perhaps I can suggest the exact place to make the fix.

If you're going to propose changes, work off of this version, which has the latest changes that are not yet in Thunderbird 38.x but will be in the next major version release:

http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mozilla/editor/composer/nsComposeTxtSrvFilter.cpp

(The only change I noticed is not checking inside <style> blocks.)

Thanks for the tip on source version. In fact, the td and px strings that it flagged were inside my <style> block, not in the actual table (I think) so this update should help in any case.

Using the span tag around the HTML signature blocks spell-checking. In looking at the source, it seems Thunderbird adds a div tag with that class name, but the filter doesn't look for a div tag, it wants a span tag. That seems like not a terribly difficult thing to fix.

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
  <font size="+1">Will it or wont' it?</font><br>
  <div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
    <span class="moz-signature" style="display:block">
      -Jefferson <em>jscher2000</em> Scher
      <table>
        <tbody>
          <tr>
            <td>Table Cell</td>
          </tr>
          <tr>
            <td>asdf ghjf wrku <br>
            </td>
          </tr>
        </tbody>
      </table>
    </span></div>
</body>