Word 2003 - can't change default language from English (US)

[skellert]

Hi,

I'm trying to change the default language in Microsoft Word 2003 to something other than "English (US)".... actually, I'd like to change it to English (Aus) or English (UK).

I'm running Word 2003 on Wine 1.0-rc3 on Fedora 8.

Whenever I start Word 2003, the language reverts to English (US). If I try to set the default to something else (as I would on a windows computer), the setting displayed at the bottom of the word window remains stuck on English US. Reopening the language dialogue reveals it hasn't been updated. But if I actually select text and then set the language of that text and then choose this as the default, the display at the bottom of the word window DOES update to English (Aus) and the language is changed - but only within that document - if I close word and reopen it again, the language has reverted to English (US). If I save a word document that's had its text changed to English (Aus) and then reopen that document, the language correctly remains as English (Aus).

In desperation, I copied a word 2003 Normal.dot file from a windows computer that has its default language set as English (Aus) and I replaced the Normal.dot file under wine. Although this method allows me to import (for example) a new default font, the default language is ignored and reverts, you guessed it, to English (US).

One might say that I should just work around by setting the language every time I create a new document.... Well, yes - but ARRGGGGHHHHH!

Is there a registry setting to update?

I thought of changing the keyboard language of my fedora system to English Australian, but I only seem to have the option of English US or English International - whatever they mean. And perhaps this is a red herring anyway.

I apologise in advance if there's an easy solution - I've trawled this wiki and googled for an hour but surprisingly not found very much discussion about this problem at all... This makes me think I'm doing something stupid because I can't believe I'm the only wine / word 2003 user who desperately dislikes US spelling. (No offense to US english speakers intended - I lived in NC for five years and loved it - just hated the spelling).

Thanks in advance,
Stefan

[Graeme]

Got exactly the same problem Stefan. Have tried running regedit and changing language settings but no luck.

There must be a simple explanation because I'm assuming that Word is picking up default settings from the system somewhere.

[vitamin]

Got exactly the same problem Stefan. Have tried running regedit and changing language settings but no luck.

There must be a simple explanation because I'm assuming that Word is picking up default settings from the system somewhere.

Those registry entries are being reset on each start. Modifying them won't do you any good. What you need is:

Code: Select all

export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

[James McKenzie]

vitamin wrote:

Graeme wrote:

Got exactly the same problem Stefan. Have tried running regedit and changing language settings but no luck.

There must be a simple explanation because I'm assuming that Word is picking up default settings from the system somewhere.

Those registry entries are being reset on each start. Modifying them won't do you any good. What you need is:

Code:
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Vitamin:

That IS for American English. Graeme wants to change to another
language, but did not specify which one.

Graeme:

You need to change the en_US part to whatever language you need to
support. If it is British English this would be en_GB, for French
(France) it is fr_FR

There are many more languages that are supported. However, do not
remove the .UTF-8 portion unless you are working with a multi-byte
language like Japanese.

James McKenzie

[vitamin]

vitamin wrote:

Graeme wrote:

Got exactly the same problem Stefan. Have tried running regedit and changing language settings but no luck.

There must be a simple explanation because I'm assuming that Word is picking up default settings from the system somewhere.

Those registry entries are being reset on each start. Modifying them won't do you any good. What you need is:

Code:
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Vitamin:

That IS for American English. Graeme wants to change to another
language, but did not specify which one.

Oh right, overlooked that part. In that case en_EN & en_AU should do the trick.

[skellert]

Those registry entries are being reset on each start. Modifying them won't do you any good. What you need is:

Code: Select all

export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Brilliant! It works! Thanks mate!

Just to be clear for noobs out there... modify your /etc/profile and append that line. As noted in one of the posts above, en_US is the default, so you actually don't want to add that! Add your local language instead... so for me, I appended the following.

Code: Select all

export LANG=en_AU.UTF-8

Cheers,
Stefan