Guidelines on Changing Proofing Language for an Entire Presentation in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

While it is easy to change proofing language for selected text containers, that happens to be a great time waster if you need the language changed across all content in all slides! There are two ways to set the proofing language for your entire presentation -- and you can use any of these approaches. Make sure you have the proofing tools installed for all or any of the languages that you need to work within PowerPoint. Then follow these steps:

1. Open your presentation and navigate to any slide with some text on it. Within the slide, select all the text containers. You can select the text containers in three ways:
   
   
   • If there is only one text container on the slide, just click on the edge of the text container to select it.
     
   • If there are more than one text containers on the slide and nothing else, press Command+A to select all the text containers.
     
   • If there are more than one text containers on the slide that also includes other slide objects, press Command+A to select all the slide objects on the slide, and then deselect the slide object which you don't want to be the part of the selection. You can quickly deselect any object by Shift+clicking the object.
     
     
   Note: A text container is any slide object that typically contains text -- these are: text placeholders, text boxes, and shapes.
   
   
   At this point of time, you have selected the text containers you want to change the proofing language for, as shown in Figure 1.
   
   
   Figure 1: Text containers selected on the slide
   
   
2. Now, select the Tools | Language menu option as shown in Figure 2.
   
   
   Figure 2: Select the Tools | Language menu option
   
   
3. This brings up the Language dialog box -- scroll down the Mark selected text as list to select an installed language as shown in Figure 3. After selecting the language you want to use for your selected text containers, click the OK button.
   
   
   Figure 3: Language dialog box
   
   
4. Select other text containers and repeat this process (Steps 2 and 3 shown earlier on this page) to change the Language option for the text on all the other slides in your presentation.
   

Another way of setting the proofing language for the entire presentation is through the Outline Pane, as explained below:

1. With your presentation open, click the Outline tab (highlighted in red within Figure 4) to access the Outline Pane, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 4.
   
   
   Figure 4: Outline Pane
   
   
2. Within the Outline Pane, select the entire text as shown in Figure 5 using the keyboard shortcut Command+A.
   
   
   Figure 5: Entire text selected within the Outline Pane
   
   
3. Now, access the Language dialog box as explained in Steps 2 and 3 earlier on this page. Change the proofing language within the Mark selected text as list as required -- this changes the proofing language for your entire presentation. Note that this approach only changes the proofing language for text placeholders-- and leaves text boxes and shapes untouched. For more information on the differences between these various text containers, look at our ] Text Placeholders vs. Text Boxes tutorial -- Shapes containing text behave just like Text Boxes.
   
   
4. Save your presentation.

See Also: Guidelines on Changing Proofing Language for an Entire Presentation in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows