Change the display language in Office

If Office appears in a different language than you expected after installation, you do not need to reinstall anything. The display language can be changed afterwards by adding what is known as a language pack. Microsoft provides these packs free of charge.

Three settings that are often confused

• Display language: the language of the menus, buttons and dialogs.
• Authoring language: the language of your text, which governs hyphenation and sorting.
• Proofing tools: spelling and grammar checking for a particular language.

These three can be set differently. German menus with English spell checking are therefore not a fault but a matter of configuration.

Changing the display language on Windows

1. Open Word and choose File → Options.
2. Click Language on the left.
3. Under Office display language, check whether the language you want is already listed. If it is, select it and click Set as Preferred.
4. If the language is missing, choose Install additional display languages from Office.com. Office then opens the relevant Microsoft page with the available language packs.
5. There, select your language and the bit version that matches your Office installation (32 or 64 bit) and download the pack.
6. Install the pack and restart all Office programs.
7. Return to File → Options → Language and set the new language as the preferred one.

You can see which bit version is installed under File → Account → About Word, in the top line.

Adding proofing tools

1. Open File → Options → Language again.
2. Look under Office authoring languages and proofing. If a language has no proofing tools listed beside it, they are not installed.
3. Click the Not installed note to get to the matching language pack.
4. After installing, choose the language you want in the document under Review → Language → Set Proofing Language.

On the Mac

Office for Mac takes the display language from the system. Open System Settings → General → Language & Region and drag the language you want to the top of the list of preferred languages. Alternatively, under Applications in the same place, you can set a different language for Word, Excel or PowerPoint only. The change takes effect after you restart the program.

If something goes wrong

• The language pack will not install: Usually the bit version does not match. Check under File → Account → About Word and download the matching pack.
• The menus stay in the old language: All Office programs must be closed, including Outlook and any components running in the background. Restarting the computer is the surest way.
• Only one program shows the new language: In the options, explicitly set the language as the preferred one, not merely selected.
• The spell checker marks correct words: Select the whole text and assign the right language under Review → Language. Otherwise existing documents keep their old setting.
• With a volume licence: Here languages are added through the Office Deployment Tool, not through the download page for language packs.

If you are not sure which pack suits your installation, get in touch via our contact page. Tell us your Office version and the language you want.