On of the issues that we have had in the office recently is that the rest of the Office, through no fault of their own, speaks and uses American English. I however along with the majority of the English speaking world use British English.
Microsoft have recognised this with the inclusion of Windows 8 (English-United Kingdom) as an edition of Windows that you can install.
Figure: Windows 8 (English-United Kingdom)
This will then give us the holly grail of Favourite spelled correctly in Windows!
Using the obvious truth of Wikipedia I make it around 2,121,502,169 people live in countries that have English as their national language and only 309,442,00 of which are American English… give or take…
Figure: Who speaks what where
Yes, I realise that I am being wholly unscientific and that I currently live smack in that red area, but I just can’t bear to go native where language is concerned. Every time I see an incorrect spelling of “Tire”, “Favourite” or “Serialise” I have and insatiable itch to fix it…
Macros to the rescue
Word is easy.. if you want to change the default language all you do is Ctrl+A to select all of the text and change it.
Figure: Changing document language
Similarly the reverse is true and you can have your bad spelling 
PowerPoint is a little more difficult. You need to change it for every shape and there is no way to globally change this. Which does kind of suck, but not is you know macros. So fire up your “Developer” bar, select “Add Code” and create a new module.
Figure: How to get the developer bar
To that module you can then add the following code.
Option Explicit
Public Sub ChangeSpellCheckingLanguageUK()
Dim j As Integer, k As Integer, scount As Integer, fcount As Integer
scount = ActivePresentation.Slides.Count
For j = 1 To scount
fcount = ActivePresentation.Slides(j).Shapes.Count
For k = 1 To fcount
If ActivePresentation.Slides(j).Shapes(k).HasTextFrame Then
ActivePresentation.Slides(j).Shapes(k) _
.TextFrame.TextRange.LanguageID = msoLanguageIDEnglishUK
End If
Next k
Next j
End Sub
Public Sub ChangeSpellCheckingLanguageUS()
Dim j As Integer, k As Integer, scount As Integer, fcount As Integer
scount = ActivePresentation.Slides.Count
For j = 1 To scount
fcount = ActivePresentation.Slides(j).Shapes.Count
For k = 1 To fcount
If ActivePresentation.Slides(j).Shapes(k).HasTextFrame Then
ActivePresentation.Slides(j).Shapes(k) _
.TextFrame.TextRange.LanguageID = msoLanguageIDEnglishUS
End If
Next k
Next j
End Sub
Figure: Macro to change between English US and English UK
Now at the click of a button you can change the whole presentation from “Bad English” to “Good English” and back again.
Figure: Change PowerPoint language
This will help me greatly as I can then write all of my things in the English that I am accustomed to…
Figure: My keyboard settings
What do you think are my chances at getting the world to switch to Gaelic?
