Microsoft Office supports almost all major languages around the world. From Afrikaans to Welsh. Language support is crucial for the most popular productivity suite that has more than 1.5 billion users. It just makes collaboration and everyday spell and grammar checks easier.

Microsoft Office is truly an international software as it gives you the power to change the language of its three main elements.

How to Change the Language in Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office allows you to have a combination of languages for the three core parts of the Office program:

  • The interface
  • The editing and proofing tools
  • The help files

You can set a language for the interface that matches your operating system, then choose a different language for your editing and proofing tools---useful if you work with a cross-cultural team---and then configure the Help files in your native tongue.

But the method to change the language for any of the three is simple.

  1. Open any Office program. Go to File > Options > Language.
  2. Check if your desired languages in the Choose Editing Languages box.
  3. If it is not displayed, then you can add a new language from the dropdown. The new language will be added to the list and the Proofing column will also show the language is installed if the language accessory pack includes proofing tools for that language.
    Microsoft Office Change Language
  4. If the Keyboard layout and the Proofing column show "Not installed" then you have to download the language accessory pack from Microsoft. Then, just double-click to install it.Note: The editing language consists of the keyboard layout and proofing tools for that language. The proofing tools include language-specific features, such as dictionaries for spelling and grammar checking, or paragraph direction buttons.
  5. Set the language you want as the default.
  6. Restart the Office program for the changes to take effect.
  7. Go to the Choose Display Language section to change the language for the display (user interface) and the Help files.
  8. If the language accessory pack included the display and help for the language, you should see it listed here. Change the order and set one as the default. Restart to see the changes take effect.

You can follow the same steps to set a default language when some error causes the settings above to change.