If you create PowerPoint presentations in different languages from time to time you’ll know that the language settings can change – seemingly unpredictably – as you work. Indeed, if you have ever created a PowerPoint presentation in another language than the one you usually use, this has probably happened to you.
This guide will teach you how to set the text (authoring and proofing) language in a PowerPoint presentation. Also, you will learn how to change the language of buttons and menus, and how to install a new language.
There are a few ways to change the text editing language in Microsoft Office PowerPoint which will set the proofing language for your spelling and grammar check. The simplest is the following:
However, this will only change the default language of your selected text. While this could be what you wanted to do, you are probably more interested in setting the language of the entire presentation. Unfortunately, this is a bit more tricky than it sounds and not entirely possible, although the following tricks might help you.
Setting the same editing language for all text boxes and shapes on a single slide:
You can continue to do this for all your slides, but if you are working on a large presentation this might not be very practical. In that case, you can try the following.
Change language of placeholders across all slides in a PowerPoint presentation:
This will change the language of all placeholder elements in your presentation. These include elements that have been defined in your slide master, e.g., tagline placeholders, text placeholders, content placeholders, etc. Unfortunately, any text boxes, shapes, or other elements, that have been added to the presentation and are not present in the slidemaster used will not be affected. In this case you need to change the language of each slide as described above or use an addin such as Ampler for PowerPoint which automatically sets the language across the entire presentation.
To change the display language in PowerPoint, i.e., the language of buttons, menus and controls, follow these steps:
If the language you want is not listed, follow the steps below.
If your preferred display language is not available in PowerPoint, you can download and install it from the Microsoft Office support page. This is also the case if you change the text language of a PowerPoint presentation and the spelling and grammar check does not seem to work (you will not get an error message if your language is not installed). Just follow these steps to add a new display or proofing language:
This will guide you through download and install of display, help, and proofing tools for the language you want. Be aware that all install menus will also be in the selected language!
The above steps might help you in setting a language for your PowerPoint presentation, but to change the language for all elements on all slides across your presentation, you need to do a lot of manual work. This is one of the main reasons I use Ampler for PowerPoint.
Ampler automatically sets the language for all elements on all slides in your entire presentation with just a click – no need for all the tedious, manual formatting!
Free trial download here: