Monday, October 15, 2012

How to fix Eudora spell checker when it locks up (hangs, freezes) when the Send button is clicked


The Eudora mail client is still treasured by some people, myself included, even though it was decommitted by Qualcomm some years ago. It still does a very good job, and I don’t want to move on to some other mail client and lose functionality that I’ve come to depend on (not to forget nearly 20 years’ worth of mail logs).

I’ve just upgraded to a new desktop PC, and had to re-install Eudora. Back came a familiar problem: it kept freezing when I clicked the send button on some messages.

Luckily I’ve been through it all before, and knew the solution, no sweat. Here it is for you other Eudora users who might still encounter this problem – I know that I’m not the only one, we dinosaurs are not yet extinct!

SYMPTOM:
Eudora locks up (hangs, freezes) when the Send button is clicked.

CAUSES AND SOLUTION:
Most likely due to one or more of the three spell-checking files have read-only attribute set, meaning that they cannot be updated when any spelling is corrected, even a single word and even if the only spelling error is in the Subject line.

The files are uchange.tlx, uignore.tlx and usuggest.tlx

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Selecting the option Warn me when sending/queuing message with misspellings
is what triggers the lock-ups (hangs, freezes):

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Be sure to switch off this outgoing messages option.