PPT2000: Changing the Default Language Setting Does Not Appear to Work

ID: Q226787

The information in this article applies to:
  • Microsoft PowerPoint 2000

SYMPTOMS

You can change the default language in Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 by clicking Language on the Tools menu, selecting any of the languages listed, and then clicking Default. You will then be asked the following question:

Do you want to change the default language to Language? This will affect the active presentation and all future presentations.
However, you may notice that even if you click Yes to this question, new text boxes created in PowerPoint may not use the language that you have selected as the default language.


CAUSE

Microsoft changed the default language and keyboard interaction in PowerPoint 2000 to more closely model Microsoft Word 2000. PowerPoint automatically detects the Language property of your keyboard. This Language property overrides the default language setting in PowerPoint.

For example, if you have the default language set to German inside PowerPoint, and you type text using a Spanish keyboard layout, PowerPoint marks the new text as Spanish, not German.

PowerPoint only uses its default language setting when you type text that has no associated language setting into a presentation. This includes text pasted from programs that do not use the Language property in the way that Microsoft Office 2000 does, as well as plain text pasted into PowerPoint or inserted as an outline from a text (.txt) file.

For example, if you have the default language set to German inside PowerPoint, and you type text using a Spanish keyboard layout, if you copy a portion of text from Microsoft Notepad into PowerPoint, PowerPoint marks the text as German, not Spanish.


RESOLUTION

To create new text boxes with a different language ID, or to swap between language IDs when creating text boxes in your presentation:

  1. On the Start menu, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.


  2. Double-click the Keyboard icon. Click the Language tab of the Keyboard Properties dialog box.


  3. Your default language will be listed in the Installed keyboard languages and layouts list. Click Add.


  4. Select the language you want from the drop-down list in the Add Language window. When finished, click OK. Use this method to add as many languages as you need to the Installed keyboard languages and layouts list.

    NOTE: You may select any one of these languages and click Set as Default to make this language the default language that is set every time you start Windows.


  5. Make sure that the Enable indicator on taskbar check box is selected, and then click OK.


  6. You may be prompted to insert your Windows installation CD-ROM, and you may also be prompted to restart your computer. When finished, start PowerPoint.


  7. To change language IDs, click the language indicator on the Windows taskbar and then click the keyboard layout that you want.

    New text boxes are now formatted with the selected Language ID.


NOTE: Changing the keyboard layout causes the placement of certain characters to change on your keyboard. For example, changing the keyboard setting from English to Spanish causes the left-bracket key [ to become an apostrophe '. To view what these keyboard layouts will look like, use the Visual Keyboard utility, which you can obtain from the following Office Update Web site:
http://officeupdate.Microsoft.com/2000/downloaddetails/viskeyboard.htm

Additional query words: PPT2K PPT2000 PPT POWERPNT 2000 PPT9 9.0 afrikaans albanian arabic armenian assamese azeri basque belarusian bengali bulgarian burmese catalan croatian czech chinese dutch danish english estonian faeroese farsi finnish french frisian gaelic galician georgian german greek gujarati gebrew hindi hungarian icelandic indonesian italian japanese kannada kashmiri kazakh khmer kirghiz konkani korean lao latvian lithuanian macedonian malay malayalam maltese manipuri marathi mongolian nepali norwegian oriya polish portuguese punjabi rhaeto-romanic romanian russian sami sanskrit serbian sindhi slovak slovenian sorbian spanish sutu swahili swedish tajik tamil tatar telugu thai tibetan tsonga turkish turkmen ukrainian urdu uzbek venda vietnamese welsh xhosa zulu

Keywords : kbdta kbproof
Version : WINDOWS:2000
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbprb


Last Reviewed: November 19, 1999
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