Quick Access to Mini-Translator (or other features)

Hello My Apprentice,

I am very pleased to see you back here for MORE tips and tricks of the Office global features.  This time I shall share the magic of how to quickly access features in Office with the focus on Mini-Translator feature. I will cover how to easily access Mini-Translator or any other feature by customizing Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) and customizing the Ribbon.

QAT can be easily customized to include any feature for quick access. For this blog, we will show how to add the Mini Translator feature. Now , you may ask, “Exactly WHAT is a Quick Access Toolbar?” – good question!  It is the little toolbar that appears at the very top of your application’s window:

.

It has some default functions in there – but you can customize them to your needs.  Hence this article!  Let’s get right to it, shall we?

Accessing Mini-Translator via Quick Access Toolbar:

1. Start by launching Word, and open the Backstage View by clicking on the File button.

2. Click Options in the Backstage View to launch the Word Options dialog.

3. In the Word Options dialog, click Quick Access Toolbar, then in the Choose commands from: drop-down menu, select Review Tab.

4. Select Mini Translator from the scroll box and click Add > >.

5. Click OK, and the Mini Translator icon will now appear in the Quick Access Toolbar.

You can also add the Mini Translator feature in the Ribbon by using the following steps:

1. Start by launching Word, and open the Backstage View by clicking on the File button.

2. Click Options in the Backstage View to launch the Word Options dialog.

3. In the Word Options dialog, click Customize Ribbon, then in the Choose commands from: drop-down menu, select All Commands.

4. Create a custom tab or a new group by clicking New Tab or New Group button, and it will be added just below where your cursor is located in the Main Tabs list. (You can rename the Tab or the Group using the Rename… button).

For example – the ‘Home’ tab was highlighted for me, I clicked New Tab and it created a new tab and a new group right underneath the ‘Home’ tab.  I renamed the tab and group to Language and Translation as you see below.

5. Select the newly added group, now navigate to and select Mini Translator from the All Commands list and click the Add >> button to add it to the new group.

6. Click OK.

See images below:

Toggle the Mini Translator icon by clicking it on and off. If the icon is highlighted, it is on. If it is not highlighted then it is off.

Alas, my apprentice, you’ve learned TWO valuable tips today – the Quick Access Toolbar AND customizing the ribbon.  Now, practice these and customize any of your Office applications’ QAT and Ribbons to appear as you wish!  Indeed, Office provides some magical features for you! 

If you have questions, leave a note below and I shall respond.

The Wizard

Office Global Experience Team Blog Survey (February, 2010)

Dear Readers,

We have now been writing this blog for six months and we would appreciate hearing your feedback!

Please fill out this short survey (5 questions) and let us know what you think about the Office Global Experience Team Blog.

Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

The Office Global Experience Team Bloggers

Project Web Access Language and Regional Settings

Hello students! 

In Microsoft Office Project 2007, you could install language packs (LPKs) but could not view the list of languages installed. In addition, the language displayed was chosen by your browser’s language settings. In Project 2010, the Multilingual User Interface (MUI) will allow access to all the language packs installed for Project Web Access (PWA). This will give you the freedom and control to change the language of the User Interface (UI) on the fly. Furthermore, Project Server offers the flexibility of altering regional settings on the fly.  In this lesson, I will explain how to change the Regional and Language Settings for PWA and the expected behavior.

WSS Regional Settings

The Windows Shared Services (WSS) Regional Settings in Microsoft Project Server offers you a unified cultural experience and provides formatting appropriate to the locale for your sites. Date and time formatting information is pulled from SharePoint.  When provisioning a PWA instance, the WSS Regional Settings for the top-level of site collections are set by default to those of the base language locale of the site collections (for example, English (U.S.)).  The Site Administrator can customize the default Server Site Locale behavior and local users can configure their Server User Locale site settings as they wish (see instructions below).

• Server Site Locale

  • Site Administrators can change the default locale of a PWA site by navigating to the WSS Regional Settings page under Site Administration. 
  • All users logging in for the first time will have their locale set to the default Server Site Locale.
  • For detailed information, see Site Regional Settings in Global features in Windows SharePoint Foundation 2010.

    PWA does not support non-Gregorian calendars. If a non-Gregorian calendar is selected, a message will display when accessing PWA instructing the user to follow a link to change to a Gregorian calendar.

• Server User Locale

  • Local users can change their default regional settings by going to the PWA site and following the steps for User Regional Settings in Global features in Windows SharePoint Foundation 2010.

    The Server User Locale dialog is basically the same as the Server Site Locale dialog except it does not have a Sort Order field.

Formatting Behavior

• Server

  • Dates, numbers and sort order

    • The WSS Regional Settings locale is used to specify date, numbers and sort order.
    • It is possible to have a locale not match the language selected. Dates will be rendered using the locale chosen, not the UI language. For example, if the UI language is Japanese, but the Locale is English, the date formats would be in English.

    Do not confuse Locale with Language. Locale does not require any LPKs to be installed, whereas switching Languages in PWA does require at least one LPK to be installed.

  • Currency

    • To set the currency unit, the Administrator would need to navigate to Server Settings > Additional Server Settings.

             

    • Project Server ignores the locale’s currency unit but adheres to the currency format. For example, in Project Server, $50.00 in US Dollars will appear as $50,00 if the locale is set to German. 
    • If you change the currency unit, all lists displaying monetary values created before the change will use the previous currency unit, and all lists displaying monetary valued created after the change will use the new currency unit.

    It is important to note that you can force the currency to be the same for all projects.  If you do that, any project created with a different currency previously will be forced to change the currency symbol the next time the project is saved to the server.

• Client

  • Not connected to PWA

    • Microsoft Project will take all of it formatting from the operating system (OS) regional settings.

  • Connected to PWA

• Date, time and number formatting

  • Project opened in client
    • If a project is published to PWA but is opened in the Project client application, then all date, time and number formatting will conform to the OS regional settings.
    • For example, if your PWA locale is Arabic but your OS regional setting is set to Romanian, when the project is opened in the Project client application, it will display with Romanian formatting.
  • Project opened in PWA
    • If a project is published to PWA and is opened in PWA, then all date, time and number formatting will conform to your user account settings in PWA. 
    • For example, if a project is created in Microsoft Project using the Japanese-Japan locale, but Project Server was set to the English-U.S. locale, after the project is saved and published to PWA, all dates and number formats will be rendered to match the English-U.S. locale if the project is opened in PWA.

• Currency

  • If the server is set to force currency setting, then both server and client will follow the server setting.
  • If the server is not set to force currency setting, then the currency will remain whatever it was originally set to.

Language Settings

The WSS Language Settings in Microsoft Project Server allows the Site Administrator to enable any LPKs installed. This section will explain how a user can interact with WSS and PWA pages if any LPKs are installed and what is the expected default behavior.

Microsoft Project Server and Microsoft Office MOSS language SKU must be identical for installation to occur. In addition, LPKs can be installed before or after provisioning. If they are installed after provisioning, then the server must be provisioned again.  There are two types of server LPKs available: WSS LPK which only contains WSS components, and MOSS LPK which contains both WSS and Project components.

Site Administrators can enable LPKs after they are installed by doing the following:

1. Drop down Site Actions menu.
2. Select Site Settings.
3. Select Language Settings (under Site Administration)
4. Check the checkboxes of all the alternate languages that should be enabled for PWA site users (see Language Settings dialog below)
5. To overwrite translations, select Yes to automatically apply changes to application content in the primary language to all alternate languages
6. Click OK

If alternate languages have been enabled as noted above, local users can change the default UI language by doing the following:

1. Drop down the User Name menu at the top of the page.
2. Select Display Language.
3. Select the preferred language for display (see below).

You should now be able to change the Regional and Language Settings for PWA and know what the expected behavior is.  If you have any questions, let me know by leaving a comment below, and I will get back to you.

Yours truly,

The Professor

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, email addresses, logos, people and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, or event is intended or should be inferred.

How to: Find my Language Preferences?

The question that we shall share with you today has to do with Office 2010 Language Preferences

Question: How do I find my Language Preferences?

Answer: There are three ways to get to Language Preferences: through the Backstage, through Microsoft Office Tools and, in some applications, through the Language Dropdown. We will go through each of them here.

To find Language Preferences in the Backstage:

1. Start Microsoft PowerPoint or another Office application and click on the File button

2. Click Options near the bottom left

3. Select the Language tab on the left side of the PowerPoint Options

4. The Language Preferences window will be displayed.

To find Language Preferences in the Microsoft Office Tools:

Through your Start menu go to Start –> All Programs –> Microsoft Office –> Microsoft Office 2010 Tools –> Microsoft Office 2010 Language Preferences

To find Language Preferences through the Language Dropdown:

1. Start Microsoft PowerPoint or another Office application and go to the Review Tab and select the Language dropdown

2. Select Language Preferences from the Language dropdown to access Language Preferences

Keep the questions coming!
The Twins

How do we make Office? Ensuring the UI looks great in all languages

Greetings Earthlings!

It’s me “-----“, continuing my mission to bring you up to galaxial speed on the wizbang concepts of Office.  Let’s blast off…

Today I’d like to give you a glimpse of how we test Office 2010 so that it looks great in so many languages. So get those neurons in place!

As technology brings people closer, it is highly desired to architect software people can use it in their own language. Consider an Office application like Word. In order for Word to be used across the world, it should be designed to handle different languages. Some languages are written in a Right-To-Left (RTL) direction, like Arabic and Hebrew, while others are written from Left-to-Right (LTR) like French and Thai. In order to handle such cases, User Interface (UI) should be designed and verified to ensure that it can grow and shrink and follow various language characteristics without causing troubles once translated in another language (localized). For example, text in some languages can be longer than the corresponding text in the original language. This would cause the text to be cut off if there is insufficient space for displaying.

Pseudo-localization: What is it?

Office applications ship globally with UI appearing in many languages. This would suggest that testers test each localized application for all languages. First, translators will translate each word into the corresponding language, and then testers will verify the applications’ behaviors. If testers discover functionality defects, translations might need to be changed after the fixes. This turns out to be a time and resource expensive process, and if adopted, Office would take many years to ship in multiple languages.

Here comes Pseudo-localization to the rescue. Pseudo-localization is a process that reveals potential difficulties with localization early enough in the development cycle. It does so by replacing localizable text (particularly in a UI) with text that imitates the most problematic characteristics of text from a wide variety of languages. The resulting text is in fact a translation of the English text into a “pseudo” language that is readable by someone who can read English. It also differs in length and is usually much longer compared to the original text (generally English). This helps ensure cases where the translated text is longer than English text are verified. Sometimes, pseudo-localized text is decorated with brackets or other delimiters to identify cases where the target text could be truncated.

Here is an example of pseudo-localized resources using the artificial language described above. Suppose that we have an English resource string as follows:

Use Pseudo-localized Build

With simple accented non-English character replacement as the pseudo language, the pseudo-localized string would become:

Ũśě Pšĕûđõ-ľŏćâĺĩžëđ Büïĺď

Adding a start delimiter as “[:“, and end delimiter as “]”, it becomes:

[:Ũśě Pšĕûđõ-ľŏćâĺĩžëđ Büïĺď]

If we increase the length of the string by appending some characters, such as “瑞갂偁ゼソяšẤßソ略”, it finally becomes:

[:Ũśě Pšĕûđõ-ľŏćâĺĩžëđ Büïĺď瑞갂偁ゼソяšẤßソ略]

Suppose that we have the above string in this example in a pseudo-localized application and now we use this for testing. If the string remains as original English text, we find an un-localized bug possibly due to hard-coding of the string. If the start and/or end delimiters are missing, we find a string truncation bug (i.e., the UI elements are not stretched enough to hold the string). If any of the characters are not displayed well, we find a string rendering bug related to code page handling (e.g., font linking issues). You can see that many potential issues can be found even with the simple pseudo language of the example. In some cases we also find functionality issues due to the presence of certain characters in strings and where they are used.

The following is an example of the look and feel of the Word Options dialog in its pseudo-localized form:

In short, pseudo-localization is a cheap and automated way to create a rapid prototype of a localized build – the pseudo-localized build. Using the generated pseudo-localized build will enable testing for defects that would prevent effective localization of the software application for the global market.

Ok – that’s pretty much it!  Great Galaxies – that’s worthy of a meteor shower! 

Happy [:Rĕâďĩñg瑞갂偁略 яథ్క Iiلإَّ'.]!

Martian

Um-al-Qura Calendar Support in Office 2010

Welcome back to class! 

   My fellow students, our lesson today is about the support of Um-al-Qura calendar in Office 2010.

The Um-al-Qura calendar is a variation of the Hijri calendar. While the Hijri calendar is used in most predominantly Muslim countries and by Muslims worldwide to calculate important religious holidays, the Um-al-Qura calendar is a civil calendar used in some Muslim countries. The main difference between the calendars is the month-length calculation depending on sightings of the moon and the sun.  Most of the dates in Um-al-Qura calendar are either identical or off by one day compared to the Hijri calendar.  In Saudi Arabia, Um-al-Qura is the official civil calendar and is used for administrative purposes; it’s also commonly used by many other Arabic speaking countries.  For more information on the Hijri and Um-al-Qura calendars, please see the Wikipedia article.

Support level for the Um-al-Qura calendar varies in different applications of Office 2010, and we’ll go over some of the features that use the Um-al-Qura calendar.

Applications Dependent On The Operating System

Support for the Um-al-Qura calendar is available in Windows Vista and above.  If you set the Current Format in Regional and Language Options in Vista to Arabic (Saudi Arabia), and then select Customize –> Date, you’ll notice the default calendar is set to Um-al-Qura.  These options are Format in Region and Language and Additional Settings –> Date in Windows 7 respectively.  For other Arabic formats that don’t have Um-al-Qura as the default calendar, we can manually change the calendar to Um-al-Qura.

In Office 2010, the following applications will have support for Um-al-Qura calendar only if the operating system is Windows Vista or a later version, with the calendar type set to Um-al-Qura as described above.  Here are some examples from these applications.

Excel, InfoPath, and Visio

These three applications all have formatting options for dates that are dependent on the operating system.

In Excel, right click on a cell and select Format Cells to bring up the Format Cells dialog.  Select Date for the Category and then select any Arabic Locale, then Um-al-Qura will appear as one of the selections for Calendar Type.

In InfoPath Designer, insert either the Date Picker or the Date and Time Picker control, then go to the Control Tools tab –> Control Properties –> Format.  The Date Format dialog is similar to Excel.  One noticeable difference is the calendar name for Um-al-Qura is in Arabic, which is identical to the Current Format in the operating system.

You can change the calendar type in any Visio text object. Inside the text object, select the Insert tab -> Field –> select Date/Time for Category -> Data Format.  In the Date Format dialog, Um-al-Qura is listed under the Calendar drop-down for Arabic (Saudi Arabia), as well as any other Arabic Language in the Language drop-down.

OneNote and Outlook

Both OneNote and Outlook use calendar as set in the Regional and Language Options.  If the Current Format is using Um-al-Qura calendar, then the date display and Date Picker in these applications will show the Um-al-Qura calendar.  Below is a page created in OneNote with these settings.

Applications Dependent On The Office Enabled Editing Language

Publisher and Word don’t depend on the operating system for Um-al-Qura calendar support.  Instead, they depend on whether an Arabic editing language has been enabled in Office.  Please refer to the article How to type in my language using office 2010 if you are not familiar with the concept of an Office editing language.

Publisher and Word

Both Publisher and Word allow you to insert dates (Insert tab –> Date & Time).  One difference between Publisher and Word and the applications that are dependent on operating system, is the Um-al-Qura calendar is also available as a selection for English languages.  Word also has Um-al-Qura calendar support in the Fields and Date Controls.

That’s it for today’s lesson, I hope you all learned something new.  Please don’t hesitate to post a comment if you have questions for the Professor.

The Professor

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, email addresses, logos, people and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, or event is intended or should be inferred.

How do I check spelling and grammar in a different language in Office 2007?

The question that we shall share with you today have to do with using your spelling and grammar checkers.

Microsoft Office Online has a very handy course about checking spelling and grammar in multiple languages in Office 2007.

We’d also like to mention the Natural Language Team’s Blog which has lots of great content about working in multiple languages and using proofing tools.

Check back here soon for more posts about multi-lingual editing.

Keep the questions coming!
The Twins

Creating a Custom Service for Office 2010 Mini Translator

Hello Earthlings,

 Today, I bring you information about how to extend the functionality of Office 2010 Mini Translator.  My helpful friends in the Office Global Experience Platform team already have many blogs about this cool new feature. You can find them by clicking on the Mini Translator tag.

The Mini Translator was created with the goal to allow users to translate words or phrases on the spot. It complements the Research pane for quick and easy access to translations, while having the option to drill down the results in the pane. This feature is built on top of Microsoft Office Research Services to allow developers to create their own research services that can be referenced and used by the Mini Translator.

Office Research categorizes services based on the nature of the service. These categories are defined to help developers organize and describe their service. Within Office the user can then select the type of service they need, so that searches are done on these only. The Mini Translator is limited to Dictionaries and Translation Service Categories:

Using these categories and following the Translation Dictionaries Content Development Kit, you can create your own bilingual translation dictionary. This kit allows you to create a dictionary that can be installed on the user’s machine and can be referenced by the Mini Translator. Local dictionaries have the advantage that they don’t require an Internet connection and can be easily deployed to individual machines. The kit provides an out-of-the-box solution that requires you only to create a list of terms for your dictionary and this can then be easily compiled for deployment. If your aim is to create a simple dictionary for a limited number of users, then this is your best option.

Alternatively you can create your own online research service to create an online dictionary. This option allows you to add as much functionality as needed beyond simple lookup. This also provides the advantage of creating a full online service that can be updated without having to deploy any new bits to your user’s machines. The process to create a full online service is well defined; but not trivial. If you’d like to know more, please refer to the full Microsoft Office Research Services SDK.

Office Research Services work on a query-response model. After the query is processed by the service, the response is returned in a predetermined XML format. This format is based on the Office Research Response Content Schema. You can determine what type of information your service needs to return using this schema. By following this schema, any feature that uses Research Services will be able to interpret and display the response. 

While you’re developing your custom dictionary or online dictionary, you need to know that the Mini Translator will not display everything that comes back in the response content schema. The Mini Translator strips out any <Image>, <Hyperlink> or <Tabular> tags. It will only display text inside <Heading>, <P>, <Line> or <NewQuery> for any <Text> or <Char> tag. This is done to simplify the formatting of the content so that it fits in the reduced space of the Mini Translator floating window. It also strips out <HorizontalRule>; but will automatically insert its own when it encounters multiple <Heading> tags. This is done to separate different definitions which appear under different result-sets in the research pane to increase readability in the Mini Translator. 

If you’re designing your service specifically for the Mini Translator, you need to remember these facts to ensure the best experience for your users. Drop a line below to let me know how it goes! 

The Martian

As stars shine, so must I give special thanks to J. Barrera, Ziad Khalidi and Ahmad Abu-Dayah for their invaluable assistance with this article!.

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, email addresses, logos, people and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, or event is intended or should be inferred.

5 Access Settings for the Right-to-Left Languages

Hello My Apprentice,

  Welcome back! As you might know already, Access is a popular database software application.  It has rich support for international features such as date, time formatting, calendar, currency and text editing, etc. Today, I will shed some light on the features that are designed for the users of a Right-to-Left language.

1. Right-to-Left Default Direction

If the language of your Microsoft Office is not one of the Right-to-Left language versions, you’ll probably see the layout of objects like tables, forms and reports in the Left-to-Right direction. You can go to the Access Options dialog to switch the direction of these objects.  Here are the steps: click the File button –> Options  -> Client Settings tab –> under the Editing section, find Default direction -> select the Right-to-left radio button –> OK.

Once the “Right-to-Left” setting is applied, the next time you create a new database, the Right-to-Left layout will be used by default for objects such as tables, forms and reports. As shown in the snapshot below, the first column of the table starts from the right.  The location of the fields and the controls in the form and report are also on the right and the text is right aligned. 

2. The Hijri Calendar

The current Islamic year or Hijri calendar year is 1430 (while the Gregorian calendar year is 2009). By default, date format used in any Date & Time field follows the format of the language set in the Windows Regional and Language Options. For example, if the Regional language is set to English, then the Gregorian calendar will be used in Access.

If you want to leave the Windows Regional language as English while having the ability to use the Hijri calendar in the database, you can do this in the Access Options dialog. Here are the steps: click the File button –> Options  -> Client Settings tab –> under the Editing section, check the “Use Hijri Calendar” checkbox –> OK. 

           Note that this checkbox will only be enabled after a database has already been created.

Once this setting is applied, all existing dates in the table will be automatically converted to the Hijri calendar format. For example Gregorian calendar date 1/1/2009, will be converted to Hijri calendar format as: 1/5/1430.  And, all new dates entered will automatically use the Hijri calendar format.

3. Using the Hindi Numerals

Hindi numerals can not be typed directly from any Right-to-Left language keyboard. To enter the Hindi numerals in Access, you can do the following in the Regional and Language Options of Windows:

1. Click on the Formats tab
2. Choose a Right-to-Left language under Current format. In this example, I am using Arabic (Saudi Arabia).
3. Click on Customize this format… button
4. Select Context from the Use native digits dropdown (this option is usually set by default for the Arabic language).
5. OK
6. OK

   Note that the screenshots above are taken from Windows Server 2008.  This dialogs could be slightly different in Windows XP and Windows 7.

Now, in Access tables, the Hindi numerals will be used for numbers typed after Arabic text.

For the Access forms, one more setting needs to be set to get the Hindi number. In the Form Layout View, select at any editing control –> right click and select Properties –> in the Property Sheet Pane, click on the Format Tab, scroll all the way down until you see “Numeral Shapes” –> select the “System” as the option –> switch back to the Form View mode.

4. Right to Left Reading Order

Sometimes when working in the Form or Report view, especially in the Text field, it could be a little confusing if the user enters the text that’s mixed with Left-to-Right and Right-to-Left languages, for example English and Arabic.

To avoid this confusion, you can explicitly set the reading order of the field. In the Form Layout View, Right click at any Text field –> choose Property –> in the Property Sheet Pane, click on the Format Tab -> scroll down to “Reading Order” -> select “Left-to-Right”, “Right-to-Left” or “Context”.

In the snapshot below, you can see the difference of the reading order when the text field is set to “Right-to-Left” v.s. “Left-to-Right”. The sample text is typed in the same order - from left to right as Hello Reader أهلاً

5. Cursor movement

In the Access Options dialog, under Client Settings, Editing section there is one more setting that is specific to the Right-to-Left languages: Cursor movement.  Users can use it to set the direction of the cursor when they move the cursor among any Right-to-Left or non Right-to-Left text.

• Visual Cursor movement - The cursor will move in the same direction as the characters shown on the screen
• Logical Cursor movement -The cursor will move in the same direction as the typed bidirectional text.

Once this setting is applied, it will apply to all the objects and any editing controls throughout the database, including the new databases.

Alas, that is enough wisdom for today.  Practice this well, and next time, I shall show you more tips and tricks. 

If you have questions or comment, leave a note below and I shall respond.

The Wizard

Global features in Windows SharePoint Foundation 2010

Hello My Apprentice,

I am very pleased to see you back here for MORE tips and tricks of the Office global features.  This time I shall share the magic of the Windows SharePoint Foundation 2010.  Now a days, people work and collaborate with each other from all corners of the world with the help of servers.  SharePoint Foundation 2010 is designed to facilitate just that!  The features that I will cover today are: SharePoint Regional Settings, Alternate Calendar and Bi-Directional Layout. Let’s get right to it, shall we?

SharePoint Regional Settings

The regional settings page is used to configure culture-specific information such as locale, sort order, time zone, calendar type etc. There are two types of regional settings: User Regional Settings and Site Regional Settings.

#1. User Regional Settings

These settings only affect your own account. Individual users can either use the default regional settings that are set on a specific site or set their own regional settings. This ability makes it easier for users who are in different countries or regions to collaborate on documents that are in the same SharePoint site, regardless of what region an user is working from.  Here are the steps to set your regional settings:

1. Open web browser, navigate to SharePoint site, click on dropdown of your account and click the “My Settings” menu as shown in the figure below

     

2. On the “User Information” page, click the link “My Regional Settings”

   

3. The user regional settings page will be opened as shown in the figure below. In order to enable your own regional settings. Un-check the “Always follow web settings” checkbox.

   

Note: Sort order can only be set at site level, all other settings can be set for individual users.

You can access Regional settings directly from the URL, just type http://<server>/_layout/regionalsetng.aspx  in the web browser’s address bar.

#2. Site Regional Settings

These settings affect the current site or site collection. Here are the steps to set the site regional settings:

1. Open a web browser such as Internet explorer, navigate to a SharePoint site, click on “Site Actions” and then select “Site Settings”

2. Site Settings will open as shown in the figure below then. Click “Regional settings” under “Site Administration”.

    

3. The regional settings is shown in the figure below. You can then set or change any of these settings.

   

You can access Regional settings directly from the URL, just type http://<server>/_layout/regionalsetng.aspx  in the web browser’s address bar.

Alternate Calendar

There are many calendar types in the world besides the Gregorian calendar. What if you want to know the date in another calendar type? Alternate Calendar gives the option of displaying two calendar types in one view! You can enable Alternate Calendar in SharePoint by navigating to the regional settings (Site Actions > Site Settings > Regional Settings) and set Alternate Calendar to the desired calendar type.

For Example in the figure below, Calendar type is Gregorian and Alternate Calendar type will be set to Hijri

 

Navigate to the Calendar view of the Calendar list. As you see below, with Hijri selected as the Alternate Calendar, the date display shows the Hijri date on the right on each day in ().

 

NOTE:  The alternate calendar appears only in the Calendar view.

Bi-Directional Layout

There are four areas in SharePoint Foundation 2010 that enable the right-to-left reading order or alignment for users of bi-directional languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. These features are List Direction, Column Direction, Web Part Direction and Direction in Multiple Lines of Text Column. For full capability of Right to left, you can install Language Pack or Full version of Arabic or Hebrew.

NOTE:

#1. List Direction

This allows users to set the layout or reading order of list in SharePoint Foundation 2010. In order to enable this feature in English or non Bi-directional version, you need to set Locale in Regional Settings to a bi-directional locale such as an Arabic or Hebrew locales. After that when you navigate to the General Settings of List Settings. A new section called ‘Direction' will be available in the General Settings of List Settings (Click List in Ribbon menu > List Settings > Title, description and navigation) as shown the figure below.

 

List will now be displayed in the Right-to-Left reading order.

 

#2. Column Direction

This allows users to set reading order of a column in SharePoint. In order to enable this feature in English or non Bi-directional version, you need to set the Locale in the Regional Settings to a locale with Bi-directionality, such as Arabic or Hebrew. After that when you create new column. You will get Direction settings in Additional Column Settings section of column (Click List in Ribbon menu > List Settings > click your column) as shown the figure below

 

The column will have right-to-left reading order, as shown the figure below.

 

NOTE: The Locale in the User Regional Settings doesn’t apply to List and Column direction options.

#3. Web Part Direction

This allows users to set layout of the Web part to left-to-right or right-to-left. The default value is None, which indicates that the layout of the Web part will inherit from the site (Language of the site). To access the direction option of the Web Part, click Site Actions > Edit Page, click down arrow of the Web part and select Edit Web Part.

 

The Web Part property dialog will show up. Expand the Layout section, there is a Direction dropdown which user can set to None, Left-to-right and Right-to-left. Click Apply. For example: The figure below, the Web part layout is set to Right-to-left. The Title of the Web Part is moved to the right side.

 

#4. Direction in Multiple Lines of Text Column

Page direction allows users to set the reading order of the content within Multiple lines of text column which is using Rich Text Edit (RTE) control (Set “Specify the type of text to allow:” option to either Rich text or Enhanced rich text). The default page direction will follow the main page layout, based on the display language of the site. The RTE control has the reading order icons which are shown in the figure (A) and (B)

(A) 

(B) 

NOTE: Web Part Direction and Rich Text Edit Page Direction feature do not depend on the locale of the site.

Wow, that is a lot of ground that we’ve covered today.  Practice this well, and next time, I shall show you more tips and tricks.

If you have questions, leave a note below and I shall respond.

The Wizard

Using the Speak Feature in Office 2010

Hello Students,

  Our lesson today is about using an exciting new feature in Office 2010 called Speak!

  In a previous lesson we discussed Using the New Mini Translator in Office 2010 which provides quick translations of individual words or selections of text on mouse hover. It also makes it easy to hear text-to-speech playback of the original text through the Play and Stop buttons.

The Speak feature in Office 2010 enables text-to-speech in OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word. By default, Speak is not present on the Ribbon, so you will need to add it to either the Ribbon or the Quick Access Toolbar.   Note, you may want to use text-to-speech playback without turning on the Mini Translator or with the keyboard instead of the mouse.

Let’s begin by adding Speak to the Quick Access Toolbar:

1. Start by launching Word, and open the Backstage View by clicking on the File button.

2. Click Options and navigate to the Quick Access Toolbar tab.

3. In the Choose commands from: drop-down menu, select Commands Not in the Ribbon.

4. Select Speak from the scroll box and click Add > >.

5. Click OK, and the Speak icon will now appear in the Quick Access Toolbar.

You can also add Speak to the Ribbon by using the following steps:

1. Start by launching Word, and open the Backstage View by clicking on the File button.

2. Select the Customize Ribbon tab in Options.

3. In the Choose commands from: drop-down menu, select Commands Not in the Ribbon.

4. Create a custom tab or a new group by clicking New Tab or New Group (You can rename the Tab or the Group using the Rename… button)

5. Select Speak from the scroll box and add it to your custom Tab and Group by clicking Add > >.

6. Click OK, and the Speak icon will now appear in the Ribbon.

Speak is now ready for text-to-speech playback, when the cursor is within a word or you have selected some text!

Click Speak to begin text-to-speech playback. Clicking the button during speech will cancel playback.

If you have questions, I’m always available – just leave a note below and I will respond as soon as I can!

The Professor

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, email addresses, logos, people and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, or event is intended or should be inferred.

Bidirectional text embedding and override

Howdy Earthlings!

“-----“ here again!  *sigh* Yeah, some of you Earth people still confuse me with being Martian.  For the record AGAIN, I come from the planet “-----“ (sorry, our names just don’t translate to English or any other earthly language)  Now, I have joined with the Office Global Experience team, because people on your planet need to know how to take advantage of the great global features that Office has to offer.

 

I know, it has only been two short weeks on Earth, since I last shared my wisdom with you in my post of ‘What happens when the same font is used to display multi-language text?’.  But, do you know how many years have gone by on some other planet, in some other Galaxy far far away?!  No time to be wasted, besides, we “------“ians just have so much brain power to share.  If I don’t offload my knowledge frequently enough, it could literally overflow my neural system. (A few seconds for you to grasp this…)  Alright, I am being a bit dramatic here.  I am just too excited to share with you the technical insights of Office 2010.  Let me walk fly you through how Office handles bidirectional text embedding and override.  Don’t worry, if you have no clue what this means right now, I’ll be able to wirelessly beam the concept into your brain.  Fasten your seatbelt. Houston, we are ready to take off…

Microsoft is a leader in the software industry when it comes to offering comprehensive bidirectional text support for its products. Today, with every new feature that they add to Microsoft Office applications, we continue to ensure that Bidirectional support is built into the feature at design time. In addition, we continue to look for opportunities to further enhance this support to meet customers’ needs. If you are a Microsoft Word user who often creates and edits text in a right-to-left language (like Arabic or Hebrew), you’re probably aware of the explicit directional tagging of text; this is where applications rely on the language of the keyboard to determine the direction of the text. This design provides users a simple method to control the layout of neutral characters (such as SPACE) and numbers regardless of the surrounding characters.

In Word 2010 we added two new features that will extend this control of Bidirectional text. Are you ready to super activate your brain for these exciting new advanced features called Bidirectional Text Embedding and Bidirectional Text Override? 

Bidirectional Text Embedding

Embedding is an advanced feature specified in the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm. This feature solves the problem of trying to insert a sentence into a paragraph with a different directionality. For example, inserting an English quote in the middle of a right-to-left paragraph. 

For clarity, in the examples below lower case represents English text characters and UPPER CASE represents right-to-left characters.

Assume that you would like to write the following line in a left-to-right paragraph according to the keyboard input sequence:

= he said “I WILL CALL sandy TODAY”

If you try to write this sentence today without the help of embedding, the text will display as follows:

    he said “LLAC LLIW I sandy YADOT”

        ●──────► ◄─────────● ●───► ◄────●

           1          2        3      4

What you really would like to see is the following:

    he said “YADOT sandy LLAC LLIW I”

        ●──────► ◄───● ●───► ◄─────────●

           1       4     3        2

Using Office 2010, this can easily be done by inserting two special hidden control characters before and after the sentence you would like to embed. In the example above it would be the quote. These control characters are the “Right-to-Left Embedding” (RLE) character at the beginning of the quote and the “Pop Directional Formatting” (PDF) character at the end of the quote. Your keyboard input text will be:

 = he said [RLE]“I WILL CALL sandy TODAY”[PDF]

*To insert these special characters, please refer to the instructions at the end of this document.

Bidirectional Text Override

Override is another advanced feature that is specified in the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm. This feature allows users to force the layout of a group of characters to a specific direction regardless of their classification. For example, you want to write a part number and you want to ensure that all the characters flow left-to-right. This number could consist of numerals and right-to-left characters. Without using the overrides, the right-to-left letters will flow right-to-left, while the numbers will flow left-to-right and both will influence the layout of the surrounding text.

For clarity, in the examples below lower case represents English text characters and Upper case for right-to-left characters.

For example, you want to write the following sentence according to the keyboard input sequence in a right-to-left paragraph:

 = PRODUCT NUMBER IS ABC632XPS

Without the override feature, the display will be as follows:

        SPX632CBA SI REBMUN TCUDORP

       ◄─●●─►◄───────────────────●

        3  2          1

What you would like to see is:

      ABC632XPS SI REBMUN TCUDORP

       ●───────►    ◄───────────────●

           2             1

Using Word 2010, this can easily be done by inserting two special hidden control characters before and after the part number. In the example above, you need to precede the part number with the “Left-to-Right Override” (LRO) control character and the “Pop Directional Formatting” (PDF) character at the end of the part number. Your input text will be:

 = PRODUCT NUMBER IS [LRO]ABC632XPS[PDF]

*To insert these special characters, please refer to the instructions below.

Inserting Unicode Special Characters

#1. Using the Ribbon

1. Position your cursor at the desired insertion point in your document.
2. Click the Insert tab.
3. In the Symbol ribbon, click on the Symbol icon.
4. From the drop down menu, choose “More Symbols…” This will open the Symbol dialog box.
5. Switch to the “Special Characters” tab.
6. Scroll down to the end of the list.
7. Select the special character you want to insert and click Insert.
8. When you have inserted the character or characters you need, click the Close button to close the dialog.

#2. Using the Keyboard

1. Position your cursor at the desired insertion point in your document.
2. Type the Unicode hexadecimal code for your character (using the table below). For example type “202B” for RLE.
3. Press ALT+X.
4. The character code numbers will disappear and they will be replaced with the equivalent hidden special character.

Martian

I would have talked to you about these features in binary, but thanks to Ayman Aldahleh for helping me to translate it into English! He is truly a multi-lingual Earthling!  Ayman is the Development Manager of the Office Global Experience Platform (GXP) team at Microsoft. His team specifically focuses on making sure the Office applications are ‘world-ready’! Ayman is originally from Palestine, but he and his team work in Redmond, Washington, USA, The Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy, The Universe.  He has been working at Microsoft since 1991.  Prior to GXP, Ayman had lead and worked in the development teams that enabled several Microsoft products in multiple languages including complex scripts.  In his spare time, he enjoys parenting, photography, travel, cooking and various outdoor activities.

Assisting Ayman with this article were Ziad Khalidi, Gwyneth Marshall and Murtuza Shakir.

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, email addresses, logos, people and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, or event is intended or should be inferred.

Using Mini Translator when I don’t need translation

Dear Scenari,

I’ve seen the new Mini Translator feature in Office 2010 – and it looks really cool!  However – I only speak one language, and while I’d like to learn another language – I really don’t have the time, so I really don’t need it for translation. Is there some other way that it could be of benefit to me?

UniLingual Speaker

Dear UniLingual Speaker,

Good for you for thinking ‘outside of the box’ and wanting to explore the new feature! While indeed you could use it to help you learn another language, if you really don’t have a need for that – you could use it to better understand your native language! Here’s how!

Let’s do this in Word (but the same would be true for the other applications, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook).

1. Start Word and create a new document.

2. Click on the Review menu, then the Translate button, then select Choose Your Translation Language…

3. Once you’re in the Translation Language Options dialog, click on Mini Translator tab on the left, and now click on the arrow in the Translate To list and go all the way to the bottom – to the Encarta Dictionary and click on that. Then click OK to save the selection and close the dialog.

 

4. Now dear, you’ve got to make sure that the Mini Translator is turned on! You do this by clicking on the Review menu, then the Translate button and take a look at the icon next to the Mini Translator:

If Mini Translator icon is highlighted, it is turned on. And it will also show the translation language.
If Mini Translator is not highlighted, it is turned off. (The translation language will still show even though it’s off.)

5. Ok honey – you’re almost there! Now, let’s see how it works. Type some text in your document, and hover over one of the words, and like magic – it pops up to tell you what that word means!!

Isn’t this fun?  Easy ways to have the features work for YOU and your needs!  I hope you find this useful and your knowledge of language increases dramatically now that you can easily learn the detail of the meaning of words!

Scenari

Oh dear me, I must give special thanks to Sandy Rivas for for being such a sweetheart and helping me with this article! Sandy is a Software Development Engineer in Test at Microsoft with the Office Global Experience Platform team.  Sandy is originally from Ohio in the United States - but she and her team work in Redmond, Washington, USA.  It is her team that is responsible for designing, developing and testing this educational feature! And, lastly, Sandy wanted me to tell you that her team is very happy you are interested in the Mini Translator feature.

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, email addresses, logos, people and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, or event is intended or should be inferred

What happens when the same font is used to display multi-language text?

Q & A How to turn on/off Mini Translator in Office 2010

Question: How do I turn on / off the Mini Translator feature in Office 2010?

Answer:

1. Click on the Review tab, and then the Translate Button.

2. The Mini Translator is turned on and off by simply clicking Mini Translator.

3. Now if you have Mini Translator turned on – when you select text you want to translate and hover over it, the Mini Translator will appear with a translation or bi-lingual dictionary based on your settings. If the Mini Translator is turned off – you will not have any pop-up when you select/hover over text.

Keep the questions coming!
The Twins