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Configuring Users’ Computers in an International Environment

Recommended Operating Systems for International Use

The Microsoft Windows 95/98, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 2000 operating systems provide support for the international features of Microsoft Office 2000. However, if your users work with a set of different languages that includes Asian or right-to-left languages (Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, and Urdu), then Windows 2000 provides the best support for displaying and editing documents and for changing the language of the user interface.

Toolbox   Information about the languages supported by each operating system, and the limitations of that support, is included in an Access database named Wwsuppt.mdb. For information about installing this database, see International Information.

Displaying the user interface in other languages

The ability of Office 2000 to display the user interface and online Help in some languages depends on the capabilities of the operating system. Windows 95 and Windows 98 provide fairly broad support within a single language category. Windows NT 4.0 has more flexibility, and Windows 2000 provides support for all possible Office user interface languages.

For example, on a computer running the English version of Windows 95/98, Microsoft Word can display the user interface in any European language. On a computer running Windows NT 4.0, Word can also display the user interface in Asian languages, and on Windows 2000, right-to-left languages are also supported.

Some code pages provide support for groups of languages; other code pages provide support for only a single language. Therefore, make sure a user’s system locale (which governs the code page of the system) is set to a locale that supports the primary language the user needs.

Note   Only Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 support changing the system locale. With Windows 95/98, users must run the appropriate localized version of the operating system.

For example, if your users work primarily in Japanese, set their system locale to Japanese (or have them run a Japanese version of Windows 95/98). If your users work primarily in French, their system locale can be any Western European system locale (or they can run any Western European version of Windows 95/98).

The following tables are a guideline for getting the best support for displaying the Office 2000 user interface and online Help in Access, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word when your users run Windows 95/98 or Windows NT 4.0.

The following table is a guideline for getting the best support for displaying the Office 2000 user interface and online Help in Windows 95/98.

Users running this language version of Windows 95/98 Can display the user interface and online Help in these languages
English, Western European, or Eastern European English, Western European, and Eastern European
Asian English and the matching Asian
Right-to-left (Arabic or Hebrew) English, Western European, Eastern European, and the matching right-to-left

The following table is a guideline for getting the best support for displaying the Office 2000 user interface and online Help in Windows NT 4.0.

Users running this language version of Windows NT 4.0 Can display the user interface and online Help in these languages
English, Western European, or Eastern European English, Western European, and Eastern European, and Asian
Asian English, Western European, Eastern European, and Asian
Right-to-left (Arabic or Hebrew) English, Western European, Eastern European, and the matching right-to-left

The following table is a guideline for getting the best support for displaying the Office 2000 user interface and online Help in Windows 2000.

Users running this language version of Windows 2000 Can display the user interface and online Help in these languages
Any English, Western European, Eastern European, Asian, and right-to-left

Note   Eastern European languages are supported by the Central European, Baltic Rim, Cyrillic, Greek, and Turkish code pages.

Limitations of displaying the user interface in other languages

For some applications and features in Office 2000, the native code page of the operating system must support the user interface language. For these applications and features, text in the user interface, including text typed by the user — such as Contacts in Outlook or file names in Binder — must be supported by the operating system’s code page.

When you use Outlook and some Office features, such as Binder and the Office Shortcut Bar, you can change the user interface language as long as the language has code page support from your operating system.

In FrontPage, you can change the user interface language to most languages as long as the language has code page support from your operating system. However, you cannot change the user interface to a right-to-left language.

When you change the user interface to a language that does not have code page support, Outlook and FrontPage display the user interface in English.

Toolbox   You can look up information about which Office 2000 features cannot change the language of their user interface and online Help in the Microsoft Excel workbook Intlimit.xls. For information about installing this workbook, see International Information.

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Displaying online Help in other languages

When you change the online Help language in Office 2000, the Help content is displayed in the new language, but the Help user interface is still displayed in the Office user interface language. However, some elements of the Help user interface (such as the Contents tab, the Options menu, and toolbar ScreenTips) are always in English.

Furthermore, when you change the Help content language, the language must have code page support from your operating system. Otherwise, the Help topics listed in the Contents tab will be unintelligible. In this case, you can use the Answer Wizard and Index tabs to find Help topics. However, if you want to use these tabs, you must display online Help in a language that the Answer Wizard supports.

Note   Windows 2000 supports all languages used by Office 2000.

If you change the Help language to a language that is not supported by the Answer Wizard, the language must have code page support. In this case, Help displays the Full Text Search tab to allow you to find Help topics.

The Answer Wizard supports the following languages:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese (Simplified)
  • Chinese (Traditional)
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese (Brazilian)
  • Portuguese (Iberian)
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Thai

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Displaying documents in other languages

Users running Office 2000 can display documents in a wider range of languages than when they display the Office 2000 user interface and online Help. For example, German users running Office 2000 on German language version of Windows 98 can view Japanese documents even though they cannot switch to a Japanese user interface.

All language versions of Windows 2000 support displaying documents in all languages. The following table is a guideline for getting the best support for displaying Office 2000 documents in Windows 95/98 or Windows NT 4.0.

Users running this language version of Windows 95/98 or Windows NT 4.0
Can display documents in these languages
English, Western European, Eastern European, or Asian All languages, except right-to-left, Thai, Vietnamese, and Indic
Right-to-left (Arabic or Hebrew) All languages, except Thai, Vietnamese, and Indic
Thai All languages, except right-to-left, Vietnamese, and Indic
Vietnamese All languages, except right-to-left, Thai, and Indic

Note   Eastern European languages are supported by the Central European, Baltic Rim, Cyrillic, Greek, and Turkish code pages. The Indic languages supported include Devanagari-based languages (Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Nepali, and Sanskrit) and Tamil. Text in Thai and Vietnamese is supported by the South Asian English version of Office 2000 only.

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Editing documents in other languages

Typically, if a user’s operating system prevents the display of a certain language, users are not able to edit documents in that language. However, in the case of Asian documents, even though users can display documents, they might not be able to edit them.

Input of Asian characters requires an Input Method Editor (IME). Non-Asian operating systems don’t commonly support IMEs, and Asian operating systems usually support the IME for their native language only. For example, this limitation means that users running the Korean language version of Windows 98 can’t use the IME for Japanese.

The Microsoft Office 2000 MultiLanguage Pack overcomes this limitation to some degree by providing Global IMEs for Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese. The Global IMEs allow users to edit Asian text in Word and Microsoft Outlook, regardless of the language version of their operating system.

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Adding international support to Windows 95/98

If your international organization includes Windows 95/98 users who work with Office 2000 documents in several languages, you can add international capabilities to the operating system. Adding multilingual support allows users to display foreign language characters that Windows 95/98 does not otherwise support, and adding keyboard support allows users to input characters not found on the U.S. keyboard.

To add multilingual support

  1. In Control Panel, double-click Add/Remove Programs, and then click the Windows Setup tab.
  2. Select the Multilanguage Support check box.

    To install support for selected languages, double-click Multilanguage Support and then select the languages you want.

Note   Support for right-to-left languages (Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, and Urdu) can be added only to a right-to-left language version of Windows 95/98.

To enter text in a given language, users need to use the appropriate keyboard layout.

To add keyboard support

  1. In Control Panel, double-click Keyboard, and on the Language tab, click Add.
  2. In the Add Language dialog box, choose a setting from the Language list.
  3. To change the keyboard layout for a language, click the Properties button, and in the Language Properties dialog box, choose a setting from the Keyboard layout list.
  4. To be able to switch between keyboards by clicking an indicator on the taskbar, select the Enable indicator on taskbar check box.

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See also

Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 provide multilingual support, but you must select the keyboard layout you want to use. For information about adding keyboard support, see online Help for the appropriate operating system.

The MultiLanguage Pack provides a keyboard layout program that makes it easier for users to type languages not represented on the physical keyboard. For information about the MultiLanguage Pack, see Features of the MultiLanguage Pack.


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Friday, March 5, 1999
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