How to: Type in my language using Office 2010
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Hello Dears,
I am Scenari - the advice columnist for the Office Global Experience team and I have been using computers for a very long time. (Now don’t even think of asking me ‘how long’ as a lady never reveals her age!) But, my oh my, how Microsoft Office has evolved since the first version was introduced! I can modestly say I know quite a bit about the best features from each release. With my experience, I am here to help you through various scenarios that you may encounter. Now dear, don’t worry, everyone gets ‘stuck’ sometimes and needs a little advice and direction and that’s where I come in! Starting today, I will reply to common global customer scenarios through this blog.
Here’s a question which I received from one of our global customers:
Dear Scenari,
I speak Gujarati as my native language and I am new to Microsoft Word 2010. A friend just told me that I can create documents in Gujarati . So, I opened my newly acquired Word application and was looking for an option to choose a language to type in. I found the Default Language option in the Ribbon; but, even after I select Gujarati and set it as the Default in this list, I cannot seem to type in that language. Do I need to buy a special keyboard or something before I see Gujarati characters in the document?
Signed,
Native language speaker.
Dear Native language speaker,
First, thanks for asking! This is a very common problem that people run into. Let me see if I can help you out.
Your friend is right in that all Office applications allow our customers to create documents that not only contain text in different languages; but also support different country/region specific information like currency, dates, calendars and more. In order to type the language of your choice, you don’t need any special hardware; however you do need to enable the editing language and a keyboard on your computer.
Here’s how you can do it in Word for example, assuming you don’t have the keyboard enabled for Gujarati yet.
1. Start Microsoft Word and click on the Office button (that’s the pretty colored button next to the Home tab)
2. Click on the Options menu item (near the bottom).
3. Now a dialog will appear – it’s the Word Options dialog. We’re going to do a few things in this dialog. Look at arrow number 3 below and, on your screen, click the Language tab.
4. In the Choose Editing languages section, use the Add additional Editing Languages dropdown to choose Gujarati and then click the Add button.
5. By default the keyboard layout will show as ‘Not enabled’. Click on the Not Enabled link. This will bring up an operating system dialog – Text Services and Input Languages (shown below).
6. Click Add... on this dialog, this will open the Add Input Language dialog.
7. Scroll down and expand Gujarati (India) , then check Gujarati under Keyboard from the list and click OK.
8. Back in the Text Services and Input Languages dialog click OK to apply your changes and close the dialog.
9. Now dear, don’t worry – I know it still says ‘Not Enabled’ under the Keyboard Layout in the Word options dialog – but what has happened is that the change you made to enable the keyboard is not recognized yet by Word. Click OK on the Word Options dialog. You need to close all Office applications that are currently running, so that when you restart them, the applications will see the change you made and you will be able to use Gujarati!
10. You will also now notice that a language bar is added to the status bar of Windows which shows different language options:
11. Now, when you open any Office application, you will have support for editing in the language you selected! Let’s take a look at Word. Go ahead and start Word.
12. Click on the language down in the Window’s status bar and choose Gujarati. Now you can start typing in this language! Isn’t this fun?
To someone not familiar with the Gujarati keyboard, you can actually launch an on-screen keyboard from the Start menu. Since we are talking about Office 2010, I will mention how you can do this in Windows 7. From the Start menu, go to All Programs, click on Accessories, then click Ease of Access and choose the On screen keyboard option. Now when you switch to a language you want to type in, you can actually see the keys represented on the on-screen keyboard thus helping you choose the characters you wish to type! |
My, my - more bonus information for you! Once you can type in a document with the language of your choice, you can pretty much use the language in any Office feature for example in Tables, Charts, Smart Art, Word Art, Mailings, etc. Isn't that wonderful? |
There, you did it!! You might want to try it again with another language – remember practice makes perfect! Now be sure and let me know how it goes and don’t forget to ask more questions if you need any help!
Regards,
Scenari.
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