I too compose emails in more than one language and having an email client automatically recognise the language a message is composed in, and carrying out the concomitant spell checking as you type is very useful for me personally. It is this feature that keeps me switching back FROM EMclient to other email clients.
As an interim solution, at least a shortcut to be able to switch spell checking languages would be useful. Right now the sequence is Alt-t-s-(Right arrow key), which is too much to remember.
Aside from the auto language detection, EMclient is a gem.
Hi Luis,
thank you for your feedback, this is still not a planned addition to the program, but I changed this topic to an Idea thread so it would not get overlooked when we consider new features to be added.
Please prioritize this idea, I constantly write emails in two different languages, and it would be really really nice if em client could detect and automatically switch spell check language.
Both Outlook and Chrome have this already, and probably many other programs. Chrome is really good, because it also accept a mix of languages, which is useful when you write in f.ex. Norwegian and uses a lot of technical English words. When a word is misspelled and you right click, it displays suggestions in multiple languages…
Thanks for the answer. But this likely comes from someone who does not need to use several languages on a regular basis. I write e-mails in three languages and it is very annoying to need to change the spell checking language by hand, when the software could do that easily, like it is implemented in other e-mail clients, browsers, word-processors and so on.
See above the post from Peter for a potential way to implement that.
I write in both English and German - regularly. It is not a great deal to switch languages when I do. I am wondering which email client can switch dictionaries automatically. I certainly have never experienced that. Maybe you could name them.
If you want to combine all the dictionaries into one, that you can also do. It works fairly well, but lowers the accuracy of spell checking. I have found once that a misspelled English word exists in the German dictionary.
Yes, Outlook can, even in the same mail if you have installed and activated both dictionaries (see screenshot). What keeps me from using Outlook (although it came bundled with MS Office) are the missing smart folders and its refusal to sync the Gmail “all mail” folder.
So it is not switching between the dictionaries, it just loads them both.
To achieve the same thing you can manually combine two or more dictionaries into one in eM Client. If you want to try it, open one of the installed dictionaries in C:\Program Files (x86)\eM Client\Dictionaries. The one that has the dic extension, not the aff one. Now copy the content to your custom dictionary file in your database directory. Mine is en-GB.custdic, but depending on your installed langue it will be different. Then set eM Client to use (in my case) the English UK language. This will now include the words from the other language dictionary as well.
The problem with having more than one dictionary loaded at a time is that misspelled words might not be flagged as incorrect. I find that switching the dictionary using the eM Client system works better for me.
So it is not switching between the dictionaries, it just loads them both.
But it seems to detect the language based on more than just the individual words.
E.g. when I write two sentences, one in German the other in English, that each contain the words die and war, Outlook gives me the correct synonyms, depending on the language of the sentence (see screenshot).
Yes, it is. In fact all MS Office components use the same dictionaries and language functionalities, including e.g. search for synonyms, grammar, etc. It is just an indication that Outlook (MS Office) actually keeps the dictionaries quite separate, even when both are loaded.
Anyway, for me this is just an academic question. I hardly ever write emails in both languages and even then the “foreign” parts (be it German or English) are usually quotes and are inserted via _copy and paste. _
And I don’t use Outlook either, it just resides on my machine since you can’t uninstall individual MS Office components.
This whole thread is classified as idea , so it might be an idea to introduce some kind of AI that detects the language of a sentence or paragraph and chooses the dictionaries accordingly.
Thanks for the clarification Pefunk. There have been a few requests on this forum to include language tools other than a spell checker, so let us see what the developers have planned.
The last time I used MS Office it was possible to install only selected items. It has been so long that I guess the Redmond teams decided to change things.
It is more than overdue that emClient at least allows to quickly change the spellchecker language (not with the keyboards – most people keep the native keyboard layout, even when writing in other languages!)
Better – and not really hard to implement – would be to automatically detect the used language.
It shows that the programmers from emClient do not use other languages. If they would need to switch the spellchecker language for every second e-mail (like I and others have to), this feature would be implemented the day before yesterday!
I also beleive that auto language switching would be a really helpful feature. The software should support an auto language recognizion or at least allow 2 “active” languages for spell checking. Most companies have local and international mails to deal with, and having to manually switch the language for every second email is quite a hassle.
I really need the feature to switch between the German and English spelling dictionary on a regular basis.
At least it would be a fast - I know, not the best - solution to be able to switch between different spelling dictionaries using a dropdown in the tool menu and additional short cuts for this!
If auto detecting the active used language may be hard to implement, switching the language using a tool menu should definitely very easy!
And if you use eM Client on the Mac, the spelling is handled through the OS, so will automatically detect the language you are typing in, as it does in all Mac apps.
