Microsoft Office supports creating and editing text in any language that is supported and enabled in Microsoft Windows.

Note You do not have to install a Language Pack to create or edit text in another language.What do you want to do?

Understand how Office is enabled to work with text in another language

Some Microsoft Office programs provide tools for using other languages in your documents. For example, if you install the English (United States) program or suite of Microsoft Office and you enable editing for Japanese, the commands for formatting text in Japanese are made available in the following Microsoft Office programs: Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

Enabling Microsoft Office to work with another language ensures that all the features that are available to work with that language are displayed in the program you are using. Microsoft Office automatically enables support for working with text in another language when you install a keyboard layout. However, you can make sure that the language that you want to work with is enabled.

Make sure Office is enabled to work with text in another language

Important Generally, the best way to manage the list of enabled languages is to enable or disable keyboard layouts in Windows rather than by using the Editing Languages tab in the Microsoft Office Language Settings dialog box. Whenever you enable or disable a keyboard layout, the change is automatically reflected in the Enabled editing languages list. For more information about enabling and disabling keyboard layouts, see .

  1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Microsoft Office, point to Microsoft Office Tools, and then click Microsoft Office Language Settings.
  2. Click the Editing Languages tab.
  3. Make sure all the languages that you work with are listed in the Enabled editing languages list.

    showWhat if a language I use is missing from the Enabled editing languages list?In the Available editing languages list, click a language to use for editing documents, and then click Add.

    showWhat if a language is listed in the Enabled editing languages list, but the words (limited support) are shown after it?

    The Windows functionality that is required to type in this language is not fully enabled. Find links to more information about how to enable Windows language functionality in the See Also section.

Set the primary editing language

The primary editing language is the language that you plan to use for most of your work and for which you want to see the appropriate default template, font, font size, sorting, bullets and numbering gallery, and other tools. For example, if you are using an English (United States) program or suite of Microsoft Office, but you frequently work with right-to-left text, you can change the default display and editing language to a right-to-left language, thereby setting all of the Microsoft Office defaults to right-to-left.

Important When you change the primary editing language, the Normal.dot template in Microsoft Office Word is automatically replaced. If you need to keep any changes that you made to this file, you should save a copy of it before you change the primary editing language.

  1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Microsoft Office, point to Microsoft Office Tools, and then click Microsoft Office Language Settings.
  2. Click the Editing Languages tab.
  3. In the Primary editing language list, click the primary language in which you plan to work.

Note While a language is set as the primary editing language, you cannot remove that language from the Editing languages enabled list. To remove the primary editing language from that list, you must first select another language in the Primary editing language list.

See also: