Hi folks, Okay, I am happy to report that I think I found my spell check issue problem. it WAS quickeys app. What I learned was this: in There are two ways to turn QuicKeys off : 1 - while QuicKeys program is still active–you can turn it off temporarily in a menu choice 2 - actually quitting the program what I learned was the following : quitting QuicKeys AFTER opening Dragon dictate still caused problems for some reason. !!!! BUT - if I completely quit QuicKeys PRIOR to opening Dragon Dictate, the problems go away! so now I am able to successfully dictate into programs that were causing problems before such as FileMaker and even Apple Mail and others. I guess I will just have to get in the habit of quitting QuicKeys prior to opening dictate thanks to everyone for your assistance. -- Thanks, Dave - DealTek dealtek at gmail.com [db-10]