Google has dropped the support used to tap into its spelling checker.

You can now take advantage of Google's huge spelling dictionary in UDP if you are connected to the internet at the time you run English Spell Checking.

In UDP, the dialog for words not found in the English dictionaries (called from the Tools > Spelling Check > English menu item or by pressing F7) now optionally has a Google button. Clicking this will cause UDP to request a spelling suggestion from Google.

Of course you MUST be connected to the internet for this to work! So this feature is probably going to be mostly useful for those who have an 'always on' highspeed internet connection.

1. You must download and install the Google Spell Checking Support in order for the Google button to be displayed. After the download completes, run googspel.exe to install. [Google Spell Checking Support has been discontinued.]

2. You must download and install the J2SE 5.0 JAVA runtime package from Sun's java.com (or some other JAVA runtime package) if you have not already done so. If you are installing J2SE 5.0 on Win/98, ignore the warning message about the version of Windows not being supported - it is supported well enough to use for this purpose.

3. You must also obtain a license key from Google by creating a Google Account - see the topic "Create a Google Account" at http://www.google.com/apis/ for details. A Google Account is free (and so is the license key) - all that is required is that you have a working email address; the process entails Google emailing you your license key. [It is no longer possible to obtain a license key from Google.]

4. The first time you run UDP's English Spell Checking after installing the Google Spell Checking Support, you will be prompted to enter the Google Account license key (hint: use Copy and Paste from the email Google sends with the key value).

Now when the Spelling dialog appears for a word not found in the dictionaries, a Google button will appear to the right of the Suggestions box. Clicking the Google button will send a request to the Google web site for a suggestion for the original word not found in the dictionaries.

• If Google has a suggestion, that word will appear in the Replace with edit field.
• If the word is spelled correctly or Google has no suggestion, the Google button will be disabled. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to tell which is the case!

• The call to the Google web site is made using a batch file named googlespell.bat which is installed in your UDP installation folder. You will notice a minimized DOS box in your taskbar while this batch file is running. Until the batch file ends, UDP is disabled. If you think the call to the Google web site is hung, you can close this DOS box and UDP will resume. This batch file runs JAVA to do the actual work; hence JAVA must be working correctly on your system in order to access Google.

  You can also use this batch file standalone if you edit it and copy it to someplace in your PATH. Click here for all the details.