Can I spell check the data that I enter into a record?

Yes! Google™ offers a spell checker that can be used on any Web site. Called SpellCheck, it’s a great fit for WebCATS’ data entry interface.

Downloading SpellCheck to Your Browser

SpellCheck requires Internet Explorer version 6.0. WebCATS only requires IE 5.5 so make sure you are running IE 6.0 before performing the following steps. (Note: Google will close all open Web pages during the download procedure, including this FAQ file, so you may want to print these instructions or copy and paste them to a different appplication before starting the download procedure).

Go to http://toolbar.google.com.
From this page, click the Download Google Toolbar button.
At the File Download screen, click Open.
At the following screen, click Agree & Continue.
At the following screen, select the "Disable advanced features" option and click Finish.
As you can see, the toolbar is now present at the top of your browser window.

You'll notice that the Google toolbar comes with several other features in addition to SpellCheck. Some of these features you may find helpful such as the AutoLink feature (check it out!), but there are two that you should disable, as described next.

Disabling Google's Popup Blocker and AutoFill Features

The Popup Blocker inhibits certain WebCATS functions so it's important that you immediately disable this feature. You can disable it for all Web sites by clicking the Options icon on your new Google toolbar and deselecting the Popup Blocker feature or, if you prefer, you can disable it for WebCATS only by visiting the WebCATS site and then clicking the Popup Blocker icon from the Google toolbar to permanently allow popups in WebCATS.

The AutoFill feature lets you automatically fill out Web forms based on a personal profile that you create. While this feature is very helpful for online shopping, it's counter-intuitive in WebCATS where you are always entering in new contact and address information, not reusing the same information over and over. To disable AutoFill, click the Options icon on your new Google toolbar and deselect the AutoFill feature.

Using SpellCheck

To use SpellCheck in WebCATS, open any record in add or edit mode and click the Spell icon from the Google toolbar. SpellCheck searches all free-form text fields (not drop-down menu fields) for spelling errors. As shown in the next graphic, the searched fields are highlighted in blue and spelling errors are highlighted in red.

Clicking on a spelling error provides a drop-down menu of suggested spellings and options. One of these options is "Add to dictionary" which lets you permanently add words such as city names to your local dictionary.

Clicking anywhere within a blue highlight (other than on the misspelled word) gives you the option to stop SpellCheck and remove all highlights from the page.

It's that easy!

Note: By default, the Google SpellCheck ignores words that are in all capitals and words that contain digits. You can turn off either of these two default settings or enable a third setting that ignores unknown words appearing many times from the toolbar's Options icon.

Want more? Browse our extensive list of Softshare 'CATS FAQs.