Question

I received a PowerPoint presentation with dozens of slides, each of them with a number of text boxes. Although the presentation is written in English, the language for spell checking is set to Canadian French. I’m trying to change the language to English, but even if I select all the slides and select a new element on the Language dialog box, the language of the text boxes remain the same. So I have to go slide by slide selecting the text boxes and then changing the language individually.

Is there a better way to do this?

The version of PowerPoint I have installed is 2002 SP3.

Answer 1

Here are two options depending on your situation:

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Situation 1: The originating copy of Office was installed from a Canadian French language based install media.

You will be able to set the default language to English, but core functions will use the native language of the installation media.

The only fix is to uninstall the Canadian French version, and install from an English-based install media or copy/paste the entire presentation to a new doc and re-format.

.

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Situation 2: Everything seems to be English, but in limited circumstances foreign languages appear.

In this situation, here are repair instructions for Office 2002:

1. Click the Start menu
2. Point to Programs
3. Point to Microsoft Office Tools
4. Click Microsoft Office XP Language Settings.
5. Click the Enabled Languages tab.
6. Go to the Default version of Microsoft Office box
7. Select the language you want
8. Click OK. A message will appear telling you what changes will be made.
9. Click Continue

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I hope this helps.

Answer 2

I've had the same problems with presentations made with German PowerPoint and being manually translated into English. The problem is that the language setting is essentially a formatting which is applied to each text box element on its own.

I am not aware of any convenient solution -- I have had to either live with the mismatch or manually changing the language "format" of each individual text box on each slide. Not fun, so mostly I live with it.

Answer 3

I have the same problem. For me is a major issue that prevents and effective use of ppt spell check feature. Somenone in Microsoft should do something. We work with slides originally written in portuguese, spanish and english, copy pasting them into a single presentation and the final result is difficult to spell check.

Answer 4

This thread contains the answer that worked for me.

The steps I followed were:

1. Create a new macro:
   1.1. Go to Tools, Macro, Visual Basic Editor.
   1.2. Insert a new empty module by selecting Insert, Module.

2. Paste this code on the right panel and save the macro:

   Option Explicit  
   Public Sub ChangeSpellCheckingLanguage()  
       Dim j As Integer, k As Integer, scount As Integer, fcount As Integer
       scount = ActivePresentation.Slides.Count
       For j = 1 To scount
           fcount = ActivePresentation.Slides(j).Shapes.Count
           For k = 1 To fcount
               If ActivePresentation.Slides(j).Shapes(k).HasTextFrame Then
                   ActivePresentation.Slides(j).Shapes(k) _
                   .TextFrame.TextRange.LanguageID = msoLanguageIDEnglishAUS
               End If
           Next k
       Next j
   End Sub
   

   msoLanguageIDEnglishAUS can be replaced by any desired language. The full list of languages can be found here.

3. Execute the macro (by pressing F5 within the editor, or by selecting Tools, Macro, Macros, ChangeSpellCheckingLanguage, and clicking Run).

After that all text elements within the presentation will have the new spelling language.

Answer 5

Thanks Leonardo for this Macro solution, which worked great for me.

One more question: how do I create a macro without attaching it to a specific presentation? This would be fantastic.

Thanks, Matt