Changing Word to Work in English

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated March 27, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

Zack is an American working in China and will be doing a lot of writing and design work in Word. The only problem is that his copy of Word (and Windows, for that matter) is in Chinese, which Zack cannot read. He wonders if there is a way to change the default so he can actually use this at work without having to look up the file paths for tools at home every night.

The short answer is that there is no setting or way to do this. You can get language-specific versions of Microsoft products, or you can get multi-language versions. The latter are more expensive, and most companies don't get them. Further, you can't change a language-specific product into a multi-language product; there is just no way to do it that we've discovered.

For more information on internationalization, from a Microsoft perspective, you might want to check out various articles by "Dr. International" at this page:

http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/DrIntl/default.mspx

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (3395) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Setting Stable Column Widths in a PivotTable

When you update a PivotTable, Excel can take liberties with any formatting you previously applied to the PivotTable. ...

Discover More

Creating a String in a Macro

Need to put together a bunch of characters to create a text string? You can do it in your macros by using the String ...

Discover More

When to Hyphenate Your Document

Want to add a finishing touch to your printed document? Hyphenating the words in the document can make your text read ...

Discover More

Learning Made Easy! Quickly teach yourself how to format, publish, and share your content using Word 2013. With Step by Step, you set the pace, building and practicing the skills you need, just when you need them! Check out Microsoft Word 2013 Step by Step today!

More WordTips (menu)

Viewing Multiple Pages

If you have a large monitor, you can view more than one page at a time in Word. This is very handy when you want to ...

Discover More

Getting Rid of the Task Pane on Startup

Tired of the task pane appearing every time you start Word? Here's how to get rid of it.

Discover More

Changing Above-the-Line Fonts

Word maintains a list of the fonts most recently used in the program. You can't modify the list, but you can turn it on ...

Discover More

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

Notify me about new comments ONLY FOR THIS TIP

Notify me about new comments ANYWHERE ON THIS SITE

Hide my email address

What is nine minus 7?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)

This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the menu interface (Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, or Word 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.