Ability to change the proofing language for all users
The proofing language for Word Online etc. is set to English US by default, and whilst you can change this on a single document, it automatically defaults back to English US for every new document created.
I've spoken to Microsoft, who confirmed this is by design, and cannot currently be changed at a global/admin level.
M Smith
shared this idea
19 comments
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Kevin P
commented
This is a important feature for us. We are an educational institute and students defaulting to English (U.S.) while preparing coursework in Word Online is a pain, especially as it is on a per Document basis. Our users' regional settings, locale etc. are all set to English (U.K.) so it would be helpful if the Office Apps Online could pick up these settings or allow a global/admin alteration of the default for a tenancy.
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James Croft
commented
Adding my voice to this feature - we'd really like the ability to set our default proofing language to English (Australia) for our entire Office 365 for Education tenancy.
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Anonymous
commented
Why on earth is this not implemented!? This 'feature' is in every other MS product!
Also, why does no one at MS Support seem to know about this. I had a ticket open for several days where the Support Eng and I went through every setting imaginable trying to find an issue that did not exist because it's not a feature yet! It even got escalated twice before someone knew about this!!
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Anonymous
commented
So many years down the road and this still hasn't been addressed. Come on Microsoft, you've got the talent to do this, why is it not being tackled?
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Hristo
commented
Hi, unfortunately this really makes online version unusefull. Please fix this problem ASAP.
Thanks,
BR,
Hristo -
Giorgia F
commented
This causes extreme inconvenience and deters me from using the online product.
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Anonymous
commented
This situation is beyond ridiculous. There are so many areas in the O365 ecosystem to change your 'preferred language' (SharePoint, Outlook, user account, tenant region). That alone is poor. but the fact that this important user-facing tool 100% ignores all the language settings and just does its own thing is just plain s**t. This is the kind of thing that make user reject O365 and MS offerings. Death by 1000 cuts, there are so many similar issues and little fixes that if they simply got on top of them would transform the platform. but no, it just gets ignored for the next big feature!
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Hope you are doing great! We have been working on this issue since ticket raised.
As confirmed, the default proofing language is English (U.S.). User can add their preferred proofing language. We are sorry currently admin cannot do a global update on this one. And this is the current design in Office Online product. Hopefully this is something we will be able to address in a future release. I found a user voice on this one, hopefully we have your vote on this one also.
If you need anything else on this one, kindly let us know. Thank you.
Best Regards, -
Anonymous
commented
So 3 years down and Microsoft have still done nothing about this? I have been trying to move my clients from G-Suite to Office 365 and just because of this issue, 2 of my clients have refused to move to Office 365.
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Anonymous
commented
mmm its a pain, did they say why?
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technodan
commented
This is affecting our students when they are writing assignments and the like.
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Mike R
commented
We are a company of around 30,000 users primarily n the UK and have the same issue. I would be interested to see a solution here too.
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David Y
commented
I'm writing from an academy in Hertfordshire, UK with over 1,000 users. Why is our organisation set to US English when we're in the UK? Why can we not change the default language for our 365 tenancy to en-GB/English UK? It's ridiculous that we have to ask almost 1.5k users to manually change this setting themselves in the various 365 applications.
We need to be able to change the default language for our users in the 365 Portal. How on Earth can this product be sold to the UK, Australia, New Zealand (and even Canada) or any other English speaking country but not be set to our respective dictionaries, let alone give admins the ability to change it!? It's a gross oversight and needs addressing.
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Zap Coffey-Brittain
commented
This is totally unacceptable. I'm testing Word Online for a UK student who needs to use the Dictate function. To add a full stop punctuation mark, the student has to say "period" unless Set Proofing Language is manually switched to {English (U.K.)}. And if a new document is opened, {English (U.K.)} has to be set again. Every single time!
Why can't I just set {English (U.K.)} in Word Online options as the default language so I don't have to keep switching the language to UK with every new document? There is still no solution to this, years after people started asking for it.
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Peprotech Admin
commented
This is not acceptable when you are selling products to UK customers it has to be customise product that you are selling else if its violating customers right in UK. I cant believe any regulation boards are not regulating this.
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Access Sport Admin
commented
This is discrimination by US company. If they operate in UK customers have right to get a customize product.
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Matt Wilkinson
commented
I've manged to correct this via powershell. However it requires an account to be the Site Administrator for the users Onedrive for Business site. You can't revoke this access without leaving an account an administrator. Please MS can the proofing language be set without granting this access.
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James Perkin
commented
Agreed. This is totally inconsistent with Microsoft's corporate vision.
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Anonymous
commented
This is crazy. I know you're an American company but...
After testing this internally we were able to reproduce the issue at our end on a test tenant. Further investigation and internal discussions led me to the findings that this issue where a user or an Admin is unable to set the proofing language to one of his choice (it reverts to US format) is by design. We have escalated this to the product group internally but also understand there are no immediate plans to change this. We also attempted to have a hotfix / update released for your tenant but that was not accepted either.
Proofing language can be set at a per document level. However, this will not be retained and the settings will revert to US the next time the file is opened. There is a request to change this design in the Office 365 User Voice site.
Ability to change the proofing language for all users
https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/264636-general/suggestions/19441915-ability-to-change-the-proofing-language-for-all-usYou might want to visit the site and Up vote the request.
I am afraid users will have to change the proofing languages for each document they open.
Feel free to reply to this email should you have further queries about this. You may log a new support ticket for any other issue related to an Office 365 service. We will close this support case now.
We thank you for your time and for choosing Microsoft.
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Paul Wright
commented
I agree this is very inconvenient and that future development of Office 365 should enable the default language (dictionary) to be configured globally for all users or at a Site, Library or List level.