Microsoft Office Language Tools

These utilities have nothing to do with keyboarding, but since they are language utilities, they are worth mentioning.

This Page

1. Insert Symbol in M.S. Word (Windows and Mac)
2. Spell Checking Non-English Text in M.S. Word (Windows and Mac)
3. Microsoft Language Settings (Windows Only)
4. Microsoft Word Accent Codes New Page (Windows Only)

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Insert Symbol on M.S. Word (Windows and Mac)

Note: For specific accent codes in Word, see the Word Accent Page (Windows only) or the generic accent codes for your operating system.

The Insert Symbol tool of Word allows user to insert a single character. This especially helpful for rarely-used characters.

Office 2007 (Vista and WIndows XP)

The Insert Symbols tool is found in the Insert tab to the far right. Click the Symbol (Ω) icon to the far right to open the Insert Symbol window. See steps #2-3 in the "Other Versions of Word" below for remaining instructions.

Other Versions of Word (Windows and Macintosh)

To use the tool:

1. Go to Tools then Insert Symbol.
2. Make sure the Symbols tab is selected.
3. A window will open showing available characters. Highlight the desired character, then click the Insert button. In some cases, you may need to scroll up and down to see all the characters.
   Note: Users of Microsoft Offce 2004 for Mac will see the Character Palette instead.

Insert Symbol Window in Word for Windows.

 

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Spell Checking Non-English Text in M.S. Word
(Windows and Mac)

Microsoft includes utilities to spell check in major world languages such as Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, Finnish, Hindi, Hungarian, and many others. To access the spell checkers, you have to mark your text in a specific language.

Office 2007 (Vista and WIndows XP)

In Microsoft Word, you can mark text as non-English in reference to spell-check and other proofing tools. However, special language-specific dictionaries and tools must be installed for the proofing tools to work in languages besides English. See your Word manual or the Microsoft Web site (http://www.microsoft.com) for more information.

1. Highlight the non-English text.
2. Click the Review tab on the Word toolbar,
3. In the Proofing section on the left, select the globe icon (Set Language). A pop-window will open where you can select an appropriate language.
4. Perform the spell check. The non-English text will be checked against the non-English dictionary.

NOTE: If no list appears or the spell-check does not work properly, check to see if the appropriate dictionaries have been installed. They are available on installation CD's for Microsoft Office

Other Versions of Word (Windows and Macintosh)

1. Highlight the non-English text.
2. Go to the Tools » Language » Set Language. A pop-window will open where you can select an appropriate language.
3. Perform the spell check. The non-English text will be checked against the non-English dictionary.

NOTE: If no list appears or the spell-check does not work properly, check to see if the appropriate dictionaries have been installed. They are available on installation CD's for Microsoft Office.

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Microsoft Office Language Settings (Windows Only)

This utility can change menus and help page settings in Microsoft Office applications from English to another language. However, special language-specific files must be installed first.

This is accessed by going to:
Programs » Microsoft Office Tools » Microsoft Language Settings.

NOTE: If the language-specific files have not been installed, then this utility will not take effect.

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This Web page maintained by Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Information Technology Services. For questions or comments on this Web page, please contact Elizabeth J. Pyatt (ejp10@psu.edu).

Unicode character names and hexadecimal entity codes are taken from the public Unicode Character Charts.

Last Modified: Thursday, 25-Sep-2008 17:08:59 EDT