Add and Remove Proofing Dictionaries for Foreign Languages in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

Microsoft Office programs such as PowerPoint include proofing tools (spelling dictionaries, thesauri, and grammar rules) for more than one language. Typically, if you use English as your main language, then Spanish and French dictionaries may be already installed. This enables you to spell check Spanish and French words. Want to know which languages are available for proofing for your version of Microsoft Office (and PowerPoint)? Scroll down this page to see a table with all the details you need.

To proof text in a foreign language, you need to install and enable proofing tools for the language you require. When these tools are installed, you can tell PowerPoint if a particular text placeholder or text box needs to be proofed as a foreign language. We will cover the actual process of proofing in a foreign language later in a subsequent tutorial. First, you need to learn how you can ascertain which proofing tools are installed on your computer, and how you can add proofing tools for languages besides English within PowerPoint:

1. Launch PowerPoint 2010 for Windows, and access the Review tab of the Ribbon, as shown highlighted in red in Figure 1.
2. 
   Figure 1: Review tab of the Ribbon
2. Within the Review tab, locate the Language group and click the downward arrow of the Language button to bring up a drop-down menu, as shown in Figure 2. Click the Language Preferences option in this drop-down menu.
3. 
   Figure 2: Language button drop-down menu
3. This summons the PowerPoint Options dialog box with the Language pane selected on the sidebar, as shown in Figure 3.
4. 
   Figure 3: Language options within PowerPoint Options dialog box
5. Within the Choose Editing Languages section, you can see which proofing dictionaries are currently available (highlighted in red in Figure 3). In Figure 3 above, you can see only one dictionary listed.
6. To install more dictionaries, click the Add additional editing languages drop-down list (highlighted in blue in Figure 3 above).
4. From the drop-down list scroll down to see which other languages are available, and select any language you need. For this tutorial, we choose French (France), as shown in Figure 4.
5. 
   Figure 4: Drop-down list displaying all the editing languages available
5. As soon as the language is selected, the Add button (highlighted in green in Figure 5) is activated. Click the Add button to include this new language to the proofing list.
6. 
   Figure 5: Select a language to add it to the proofing list
7. In some cases, you may be asked to insert your CD or DVD that contains the setup files for Office 2010. In many cases, Office 2010 retains setup files on the same computer where it has been installed, and may not ask you to insert ant CD or DVD media. In other scenarios, you may not even be asked to insert any media. You will see a Not installed status (as shown highlighted in red for Hindi in Figure 6, below), which essentially is a link that can be clicked. This takes you to the download site from where you can buy and access additional files to enable proofing for this language.
8. 
   Figure 6: Select a language to add it to the proofing list
6. Either way, you will end up with adding the selected language dictionary to your proofing list, as shown highlighted in red in Figure 7.
7. 
   Figure 7: Selected language added to the Editing language list
Note: Adding a dictionary only enables that language for proofing. No keyboard layouts or menu options change. Those options are beyond the scope of this tutorial. Also, any languages you add are available across all Office 2010 applications such as Word, Excel, Outlook, etc. and are not limited to PowerPoint alone.



7. At this point, you can make any of the installed proofing tools the default by clicking the Set as Default button (highlighted in blue in Figure 7 above). You can also remove any proofing tools you may have installed in the past by selecting the editing language you want to remove, and then clicking the Remove button (highlighted in green in Figure 7 above).

If you have the English version of Microsoft Office 2010 installed, then you already also have proofing tools for French and Spanish installed in addition to English. This information from Microsoft provides details about the proofing tools available in various localized versions of the Office 2010 suite:

More information on localized versions of Office 2010 and the proofing tools can be found on Microsoft's web site.

In subsequent tutorials within this series, we will explore the topic of proofing in foreign languages in more detail.