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silverlakerCA

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 2, 2020
153
25
I have no idea how to fix this. My document opened in Microsoft Word and in the bottom status bar was 'German (Germany)'.

I tried doing a spell check but was presented only German correction options. I selected English (US) but then when I returned to spell check the doc it went back to German.

What has happened?
How do I fix this?
Thanks for your help.
 
Do you have multiple keyboard layouts configured? Word "auto-detects" your language by determining your current keyboard layout and setting the document language accordingly.
 
I don't have any other keyboard layouts configured. Wouldn't even know how to do that.
That's what is frustrating. Nothing changed other than opening a previously created document for revisions. Not seeing it default to German/Germany is the problem.

At my office, Word shows English. The doc I opened at home in Word shows German.
 
Is it just this one particular document defaulting to German with no way of changing it to English (am I right to assume the document in question is English and not German)? Is Word now defaulting to German regardless of document, even for newly created empty documents?
 
I haven't used Word for a while so I don't remember exactly where things are but I think I can help.
Whenever you create a document it's based on a template.
The template gets its settings from the styles that are used when it's set up- headings, fonts, margins, page breaks etc.
So assuming the original template had German as the default language, then you can select text and change the spell check setting but it will default back to German.

Thee are two ways you can fix this. One is to select all the text and then go to the setting for 'character' (this is probably in the 'Format' menu from memory). There you will be able to change the default font, style, size and language.

The second method it to open a new document- just as you do anytime you want to create a document.
This will use a template in English assuming you've never seen this problem on anything you've produced yourself.
Now select all the old document (Cntrl+A) and copy and past it into the new document (Cntrl+C, Cntrl+V)
I assume those are right for Word still?

You may have a few formatting issues as your template will probably have different tabs, page breaks etc, but it should be in English.
It's worth spending a bit of time learning about templates if you create documents because it saves you so much time eventually.
You set up a template exactly how you like it then every document will have the same style and settings.
Sorry I don't have a copy of Word in front of me any more to give you more details, but I think you should be able to work it out from there.
Best
 
I had a similar issue a few months back, Word somehow decided to use French spell checking on a .docx document I exported from Pages.

If I recall correctly, that document was made with the blank template in Pages and there were no alternative languages or keyboards.
 
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