Permanently changing default language to English UK

foxint said:

Every day I open up a new word document (WORD 2010), I have to set the proofing language back to UK-English as default. But Word keeps defaulting it back to US-English.

A most confusing thread...

As far as I can understand you, you want to keep your current Windows Input Language & keyboard layout, but you would like to change the Microsoft Word 2010 default proofing & spell check language to UK English.

To change default proofing language in Microsoft Office 2010 & 2013 apps:

• Select File menu > Options
• Select Language in Options left pane
• Select the language you want to use as default proofing language
• Click Set as Default
• Accept the change by clicking Yes in the warning dialog
  
  
• Restart application (Word, Excel, Access etc.)
• Your default proofing language is now the one you selected
  
  

Kari

Please re-read Kari's advice- that is the way to specify the lanuguage. I'm based in Australia and have the same setup you require. I used exactly the steps that Kari suggested.

OK, as I have never had this issue with any version of Microsoft Office apps, I tested a little bit. A logical point to start testing was to delete all input languages from Windows 7 except my default Finnish (I use and have to switch between Finnish, Swedish, German and English input languages on daily basis).

Left with only Finnish as Windows input language I can reproduce your issue; changing the default proofing language in Word seems to be ineffective.

I reinstalled the input languages I need and tested again. Results are very clear: the selected Input Language in Windows must match the default proofing language in Word in order for it to work. If the Windows Input Language and default word proofing language do not match when word is launched, it defaults to language in which it has been installed, in my case US English.

Seems to me you must install and enable UK English as Windows Input Language. You can keep US English as default input language but you need to switch to UK English (icon in notification area) when using Word for it to use UK English as proofing language.

Kari

Here you go:

• Keyboard Input Language - Add or Remove
• Keyboard Layout - Change

When you start Word, it picks the new documents language from your chosen input language:

(My Taskbar is on the left instead of bottom, usually the input language selector is bottom right.)

As Windows allows you to use different input languages for each application, you can keep US English as default and select UK English when creating a new Word document.

I need to test this more but it really looks setting the default proofing language in any Office app is meaningless as the new document always defaults to language used as Windows input language. I think the solution could be to create a new template for new docs using a certain proofing language, but that I must first test.

Kari