An often-repeated myth says that Word’s spelling or proofing language default is locked into the Windows language setting. Officially that’s not true and never has been since the first Word for Windows in 1989. In practice there’s a bug in Word which is why this persistent myth keeps being repeated.
Changing the Word language default
It’s true that Word can be annoyingly stubborn about changing default settings. In theory all that’s needed is to click ‘Set as Default’ in the Language selection box. But that doesn’t always work, as thousands of frustrated Word users have discovered.
The solution is to edit the Word template directly see The ultimate way to change Microsoft Word defaults.
That’s all you need to know to fix the problem for MOST people.
But the rumor about a link to Windows persists for a good reason because of a rare but stubborn bug in Word.
Word has TWO language settings
Microsoft Word has two main language settings*, each is setup and altered differently with changes in how that’s done over the years. That’s probably one source of the ‘Windows setting’ myth.
Spelling and Grammar setting
The setting everyone knows is the spelling/grammar language for text that shows up in the bottom status bar. Microsoft calls it the Proofing Language.
That language setting is separate from the setup of either Windows or Mac.
When Office is installed, it will make the initial defaults according to the Office setup language chosen. But that initial setup can be changed in Word to whatever language you like for all or part of a document.
The spelling/grammar language can be set as a default for a template, in each style or manually for selected paragraphs or text. Clicking on the status bar language label opens the setting to let you change language.
See Three ways to switch language in Word and one way to turn it off
Menu or Display language in Office
The other language setting in Word and Office is the ribbon, menu and dialog box language. Microsoft calls it the ‘Display Language’.
That language is first set when Office is installed. For Microsoft 365, Office 2021/2019 etc it starts from this page in your Microsoft account details.
This is where you can choose an initial language for the Office menus and initial spelling/grammar proofing defaults. The web site will choose your Windows/Mac system language automatically from the Windows/Mac setting. But that can be changed to another language from the long list.
(This is probably where the myth has started. Talk of “Installing Office to change the default language” has been misinterpreted to mean the spelling/proofing language not the menu language).
Changing menu language in Office
In Microsoft 365, Office 2019, Office 2021 and later, the menu or display language can be changed to another language. It doesn’t matter what Windows or Mac is setup for.
It took us only a few minutes to change Microsoft 365 to Arabic display menus while keeping Windows with English language.
That’s done from File | Options | Language | Office display language.
As you can see, there’s a ‘Match Microsoft Windows’ option but another language can be chosen.
* Yes, there are other language settings in Office. We’re trying to keep it simple <g>. Microsoft makes a distinction between the ‘Authoring’ language and the ‘Spelling/Grammar’ language. For example, the language for VBA also changes. Once upon a time, it was possible to have the Keytips in a different language to the menus.
The Word bug
All the above applies to most people but there’s a long-standing bug in Word
The ultimate way to change Microsoft Word defaults.
Three ways to switch language in Word and one way to turn it off
