In a client configuration where an exchange 2007 mail server is about to be changed but doesn’t support the latest office Outlook client – a user complained about an issue where their spell checker in Outlook 2007 had stopped working. Checking the editor options for proofing under the mail settings indeed confirmed that the settings were greyed out where it says “When correcting spelling in Outlook”
Knowing that Word 2007 had been removed prior to the Office 2016 install – I was curious about the linkage between them. What I found though was a bit of a surprise! Locating the Outlook.exe in the office12 directory and the new 2016 in the root\office16 directory and reading an article about this happening with Office 2010 / Outlook 2007 – I decided to take a punt and do what the article suggested. That was to copy the 2016 Winword.exe executable into the directory with the Outlook 2007 executable!!!!
Thinking that this would be pointless – I was pleasantly surprised to see that on restart outlook now activated the greyed out options. Testeing comfirmed it was indeed working and checking the spelling as the user typed
Hope that helps someone in the same position of trying to support the older outlook client during transition to newer office installs.