there’s red squiggly lines all over the place. Sometimes there’s technical text or details that Word can’t understand – i.e. You can select a language that isn’t installed on your computer – Word will keep the language setting even though it can’t spell or grammar check it. Go to Review | Language | Set Proofing Language from the long list.

Select the paragraphs or just words in the ‘other’ language. Spanish (Spain) or Spanish (Mexico) instead of Spanish (US) ).

But sometimes it doesn’t work or you want a specific language variant (e.g. These days, Word has an ‘autodetect’ feature which should figure out which language is being typed and change the dictionary. For example, if you have a letter with both English and Spanish sections – Word can spell check each using the right dictionary. You can change the language (for spelling and thesaurus purposes) within a document. If you write documents in different languages you could create a template for each language eg Normal-English.dotx Normal-French.dotx etc. Word templates can store a default language for documents based on that template. To change Word’s default language, go to Review | Language | Set Proofing Language That will result in Word having the English (US) dictionary by default. Sometimes Windows has the wrong region setting, most commonly with the US defaults applied when you don’t live there. The Office installation picks up your region setting from Windows to choose the default language in Word. Usually the appropriate one for you is chosen automatically during setup. You’ll repeat some of the installation steps including Customize where you can find and select additional languages or features available in that language. To get the languages supplied with your version of Office, go to Control Panel | Programs and Features (or similar in earlier versions of Windows), choose Microsoft Office and then change settings. Other languages that are included with the ‘English’ version of Office are French and Spanish – with a similarly large number of variations including French for France and Canadian Quebecois. and less well known ones like spelled/spelt. Of course, all language variants have a lot of common spellings but differences like the common ones color/colour etc. You’d expect English (US) and English (UK) but there’s many others available: ‘Dictionaries’ plural because there’s many variants supplied. A quick look at your dictionary options in WordĮven if you, like me, only speak one language there are still some powerful language and dictionary options in Word to keep in mind.Īll copies of Microsoft Office (recent versions anyway) come with English dictionaries.

Find custom dictionary in word 2007