For completeness, I thought I better report the solution to this problem. I checked the file contents of the Pmail shared directory against a fresh Pmail install and discovered that four files were missing. Sorry, I didn't note which files they were, but at least two of them looked as if they might be dictionary-related (the main dictionary file was still present and correct). If I had more time, I might have identified their function, but I usually don't get the satisfaction of tidying up all the loose ends. No idea how they got deleted, but it serves as a lesson. I'm 95% sure it must have been me who deleted them, because only three of us have the rights and the other technicians leave Peg & Mercury to me.

Merci pour l'information, Philippe, it's interesting to know that you came up with roughly the same solution for staff/students as I did.

Regards,

I'm running a Pegasus/Mercury server for around 2000 users. We have two separate Pegasus shares (this is because I need to make different address directories available to different groups exclusively). On one of the shares, any attempt to spell-check a message results in the error-message "Pegasus Mail cannot find the spelling checker dictionary file PMDICT3.PMD. It should be stored in the same directory as WINPMAIL.EXE. The spelling checker cannot continue." This happens for any user connected via that share, but if you connect using the other share, no problem! Yes, the dictionary file PMDICT3.PMD is present in both shares and I've tried copying the file; no change. Any clues as to where I should start looking?

First thing i would do is use Help | About Pegasus Mail | Info on both setups and checkout the directories for the program and mail.  I would then checkout the two shares to ensure you are giving full rights to the users mail directories and at minimum read writes to all files in the program directory.  In addition, make sure that no files are marked "Read only" or "Hidden"

Thanks Thomas, but sadly this is not entirely possible. My environment is an educational one (years 7 to 13) and anything, repeat anything not bolted down, will be tampered with. The issue which requires two versions of Pegasus, is that staff wish to avoid students' having easy access to address directories containing first names.

Obviously, users have full rights to their own mailboxes, but only 'write' rights to anyone elses. No one (except system and mail managers) has full access to the Pegasus directory(s); the rest of the school is limited to 'read only' access at directory level. No files are 'hidden' although some address files have special rights in case a student finds a way into the staff-version of Pegasus. I'm reluctant to use this as an overall solution, because I know that Pegasus gets confused by files with limited rights. For us, the problem only manifests if a student is using the wrong version, so it's not a problem.

This has worked fine for over four years and the fact that only system managers have the rights to change anything implies that it's something we've done by accident. I decided to ask in the hope that there was an 'easy' answer, but I may just decide to recreate the program folder from scratch. I appreciate your help [Y]

FWIW, that's why I was using Netware in the middle schools (6,7,8). Netware is a whole lot easier to lock down than the Windows servers and running Mercury/32 against a Netware server is a piece of cake.  Can be used as either a front end to MercuryS.NLM or deliver directly.  As long as the Netware console is in a secure location then the operations is pretty much hands off.

FWIW, I did not even allow write rights to the other users mailboxes since it's too easy for the kids to create an RFC 2822 message and drop it into another's mailbox.   All of the mail was handled via Mercury/32; there was no local delivery allowed at all to either users or groups.

[quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"]

First thing i would do is use Help | About Pegasus Mail | Info on both setups and checkout the directories for the program and mail.  I would then checkout the two shares to ensure you are giving full rights to the users mail directories and at minimum read writes to all files in the program directory.  In addition, make sure that no files are marked "Read only" or "Hidden"

 [/quote]

Thomas

 I don't think it's a good solution to give the users the rights read and write on the program directory, this way they could be able to destroy or modify crucial datas, in my school PM is located on a share with only the read/execute right, all works fine except when a user opens the main hlp file (winpm-32.hlp), the system tries to open the winpm-32.gid file with modify rights and it can't, an error is displayed, apart of that all works fine.

I have also PM on 2 different shares (to have public folders shared between some users (staff) and not for the others(pupils and teachers)) and I don't have any problem with the spell checker, each PM installation doesn't know another exists, you could also have as many installations of PM as you've users.

Regards