Windows 7 forum: Use outlook express in windows 7 pro

I run a number of older XP programs under XP mode on my Windows 7 machine. For example, I have Office 2003 installed and WORD, EXCEL, etc. all work fine including spell check. But OE which supposedly uses the dictionary of WORD has no spell check function. I tried looking for the file csapi3t1.dll on an older pure XP machine and found it there but all solutions I have found say you should have this (expand first?) at
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\PROOF but I can't find any PROOF folder under Microsoft Shared using either Windows Explorer in XP mode nor using the equivalent Explorer in Win 7. I tried just copying the dll file from the older PC into the Microsoft Shared folder but that accomplished nothing. OE works fine in XP mode but has no spell check and I prefer to stick with OE even though I also have Outlook from Office 2003, gmail, etc..

Thanks!

But why? Sure you CAN do it, but why? Forget the MASSIVE overhead of running XP in a VM just for a single app, Outlook Express was a spammer's wet dream of an email app. Lax security, loads of exploits, all wrapped up in a nice tidy bow of generally clueless users.

Thunderbird is an excellent alternative that's free, but there are others out there as well if it's not to your liking. I think Pegasus Mail is still kicking. Last I looked at it, quite some time ago, it wasn't much to look at, but it was a very solid email app. There's probably dozens of others out there if someone were to simply LOOK. Or you could just go to an all webmail experience with say Gmail or Hotmail.

P.S. It was just not Office 2003 that I wanted to continue to use but other XP programs such as Photoshop Elements, Easy Photo Print and others that were for XP and I didn't feel like ditching them and buying Win 7 versions. According to Microsoft's PR, that's why they made an XP virtual machine available for free, i.e. so people could run their old XP programs and not have to buy new ones. They all work great except for the spell check in Outlook Express.

Bob

Thanks Bob for going to all that trouble and for your suggestion. I did already install Office 2003 in XP mode and I assumed that the XP mode previously downloaded from Microsoft included the latest SP. I just checked and the virtual machine is XP Professional SP3 so I can't figure that out. Maybe I should try re-installing Office 2003? From what I have read in various forums, I am not alone with this problem and I have yet to find a solution. If you can think of anything, let me know but thanks for your help to date.

Bob

if Bob meant Office 2003 then Office's own Service Pack, not the SP for XP.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8

I may be wrong.

Mark

Sorry for the confusion between XP SP3 and Office 2003 SP3. I have now downloaded Office 2003 SP3 and installed it and there is still no spell check available in Outlook Express even after re-booting my computer.

Bob

Thanks Bob for all your helpful comments. I got spell check working now OK thanks to your clarifications. It only took longer than it could have because we had three grandkids staying with us and I had almost no keyboard time

In response to some comments about OE alternatives, I like OE and its spell check as I sometimes compose e mails in French as well as English and from what I have heard, many or maybe even all of the freebie spell checkers just offer US English. I like OE as it is much simpler than Outlook and meets all my needs with no complications. As for spam, I receive very little spam thanks to my ISP's spam filters plus when they aren't sure, they flag an e mail as possible spam in which case my message rule in OE sends it to a spam folder I have created in OE and then I can review the few e mails in it at my leisure.

Thanks again for all the helpful suggestions.

Bob

On my part I made the mistake of telling them the solution first. I can't guess why that doesn't work for folk but they locked up solid and refused that was the way it worked. Since it's not paid support at the office we had to treat them as nice as we could but not do much else but show them where our product demos were. In other words, move on with our work.