You must set the language on your PC. Read this article on
how to set it by Cindy Meister....
1. SET THE DESIRED DEFAULT LANGUAGE IN WINDOWS
Note for all versions: remove any languages and keyboard
layouts that you do not intend to use.
Win95, Win98, WINNT, Win2000, WinXPHome(?)
------------------------------------------
START/Settings/Control panel/Keyboard/Language (or Input
Locales)
Choose the language you perfer and set it as the default.
If you use a different keyboard layout than the language
default, click the Properties button and select your
keyboard layout.
WinXP-Pro
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START/Settings/Control panel/Regional and
Language/Languages/Details
Select your default language from the list at the top. If
you need a different keyboard layout, select the language
in the list at the bottom, then click ADD. In the
following
dialog box choose a keyboard layout/IME.
2. ENABLE ONLY THE LANGUAGES YOU WANT TO USE
START/Programs/Microsoft Office/Microsoft Office
Tools/Microsoft Office [version] Language Settings
(Note: not available for Office 97)
In here, enable only the languages you intend to spell
check.
3. SET THE DEFAULT LANGUAGE IN WORD
- Open Word. A new document should be displayed; no text
selected.
- Tools/Language/Set language
- Choose your language and click "Default" (Note: this
changes the Language formatting of the Normal style in the
Normal.dot template)
- If on exiting Word you are prompted to save changes to
the Normal.dot template, say "Yes", otherwise the default
setting will not "stick".
It is of the *utmost importance* that the Windows and Word
language settings match exactly. Only then will language
formatting in Word be controllable, reliable and half-way
predictable.
4. TURN OFF THE AUTO-OPTIONS
To stop Word from chaning languages on you in mid-stream
in
Word 2000 and later:
Deactivate the language Auto-detect in Tools/Language/Set
language and the keyboard Auto-detect in
Tools/Options/Edit.
If you've used and really like these options, then leave
them on. But if you start getting unpredictable language
changes while editing, try turning them off.
5. PREDICTABLE LANGUAGE FORMATTING
Once you have the language formatting between Word and
Windows synchronized, all new documents you create should
start in your chosen language. In order to use other
languages, you have a number of choices:
- Select the text and apply the language from
Tools/Language/Set language
- Change the language for the NORMAL style. This will
automatically change the language throughout your
document,
including any that of any text formatted with a style
based
on Normal.
If you've set up your own style hierarchy, not using
Normal, then change the language of the base styles.
- In order to combine styles with other languages in a
document in your default language, simply create styles
with that language setting.
- In order to create entire documents in a different
language, set up a template with the desired language in
the Normal style and create the documents from this
template.
Note that the above points can only work if a file
(whether
document or template) was created on a machine with
synchronized Windows and Word styles.
6. LANGUAGE FORMATTING IN EXISTING DOCUMENTS
Documents created on non-synchronized machines will always
tend to revert to the Windows default of the machine on
which they were created. Formatting using styles will not
work, because "direct formatting" takes precedence over
paragraph style formatting. And when Word applies the
Windows default language to a new document when creating
it, the language formatting is "direct" (at the character
level).
If you receive such a document (and there are a lot of
them, out there!), the stop-gap measure is to Ctrl+A, then
Tools/Language/Set language and choose the correct
language. Note, however, that this will not affect
headers,
footers and some other areas that are not included in a
Ctrl+A selection.
You'll still have problems with the document reverting
back to the "bad" language while editing. There is no way
to get rid of this problem in an existing file, short of
recreating the file.
- Make certain your machine is synchronized.
- Create a new document.
- Copy all but the last paragraph mark of the original
document and paste it into the new document (or use
Insert/File)
Another possibility is to save in RTF or HTML-Format, then
go into the source code and change/remove the language
formatting.
At this point, the automatic language change while editing
should cease. But this will not remove the manually
applied
language formatting already present in the document.
jesse
