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Question

Changing Languages in Office 2016

  • October 12, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 35 views
M
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We've had a request to have the Burmese language set in Office 2016..I've found this solution below but not sure of what the actual file name would be to change it too. If there is another solution I'm open to that as well. Thanks,

You can do this in a much less intrusive way by opening the Terminal and entering:
defaults write com.microsoft.Excel AppleLanguages '("pt-BR")'
defaults write com.microsoft.Word AppleLanguages '("pt-BR")'
defaults write com.microsoft.Powerpoint AppleLanguages '("pt-BR")'
Change pt-BR for the wanted language.
With this, you get the app translated and also spell check working.

    P

    2 replies

    talkingmoose
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    • talkingmoose
    • Community Manager
    • October 12, 2017

    @mahughe, these are Terminal commands that set the language for each app. Office 2016 for Mac is localized into about 27 different languages for use when the macOS system language is set to one of them. The commands you posted will set the Office apps to display their menus, dialogs and other settings in Portuguese.

    While an Office application is quit, you can change the language it displays using a two-letter code below:

    ar = Arabic
    cs = Czech
    da = Danish
    de = German
    el = Greek
    en = English (US)
    es = Spanish
    fi = Finnish
    fr = French
    he = Hebrew
    hu = Hungarian
    id = Indonesian
    it = Italian
    ja = Japanese
    ko = Korean
    nl = Netherlands
    no = Norwegian
    pl = Polish
    pt_PT = Portuguese
    pt = Portuguese Brazil
    ru = Russian
    sk = Slovak
    sv = Swedish
    th = Thai
    tr = Turkish
    zh_CN = Chinese Simplified
    zh_TW = Chinese Taiwan

    Run one or more of the following commands in Terminal. This example will set them to Japanese:

    defaults write com.microsoft.Excel AppleLanguages '("JA")'
defaults write com.microsoft.Powerpoint AppleLanguages '("JA")'
defaults write com.microsoft.Word AppleLanguages '("JA")'

    What you're probably look for, though, is proofing language. You don't need to change the application's language to change languages for proofing. In Microsoft Word choose Tools menu > Set Proofing Language.

    Unfortunately, Burmese is not an option for either of these language features with Office 2016 for Mac.

    J
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    • janderson1
    • New Contributor
    • February 4, 2020

    Hi - I've tried this on an older MAC (2015) MODEL, but 2017 and above models this doesn't work. Any ideas why this would be?

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