Automatic language detection

[Phil49]

Hi there !!

We've been using PowerPoint 2003 for a while, but English professors
are a but perturbed by the way it behaves when trying to detect
languages !

We're a french school and of course, the default language is french for
softwares.

We've enabled both English ans French because courses are taught in
both languages.

The point is that when a French student wants to create a PowerPoint
file in English language, he has to select the whole text to have it
detected properly as an English language text, otherwise, PowerPoint
keeps considering it as a French text and underlines "mistakes".

We could set the default language as English language beforehand (or as
default language the way our American or English teachers do), but,
obviously, we are looking for something automatic as many homeworks
have to be done in our native tongue...

I've browsed the online help and read specific articles about how to
activate a few languages, I also checked the Office Tools settings
which mention both French and English, but up to now, "automatic"
dectection doesn't work very well !

Is this the way PowerPoint is supposed to be working and we cannnot
expect more than that, or did I miss something !?

Thanks very much in advance for your help !!

P.S : Word 2003 seems to be better as far as language detection is
concerned, but not perfect !!
Are both components sharing the same "engine" or not !?

PhiL.

 

[Luc]

Well, PowerPoint has not got the capabilities of Word in that field. Here is
a transcript of a mail by John Langhans [MSFT] explaining what is possible.
I am sure he will not mind me quoting this here:

The "default language" setting in PowerPoint is the language setting that
PowerPoint uses when it encounters text entry where no language ID can be
determined (for example, when pasting text from a source <such as Notepad>
where language information is not embedded in the text formatting).

When you are entering text via the keyboard, the keyboard language always
overrides the default language setting in PowerPoint. PowerPoint doesn't
have the language detection capabilities that Word does so it cannot tell
from the words that you are typing which language you really intended so it
determines the language for typed text from the keyboard language settings.

Since Word does not language detection you might consider entering most of
your text in Word, using it's Outline view (if most of your text is titles
and bulleted lists) and then, when done, using the Send to PowerPoint tool
(or save as *.doc and then open the *.doc directly from PowerPoint
File->Open dialog <choose "All outlines" as file type>). Since the language
setting is embedded in the text of the *.doc, PowerPoint will preserve that
language setting when the *.doc file is converted to a PowerPoint
presentation.

If you have a keyboard for the language that you want to use, then you
should use the "Regional and Language Settings" dialog to add that language
keyboard to your list of "Text services and input languages" and make sure
that it's the active text input language matches the keyboard that you are
using (and the language you want to input) when you are working in
PowerPoint.

If none of these workarounds work for your particular scenario/environment,
there's a KB article that describes how to change the language setting for
all text in a presentation to the desired language (after the fact).

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;245468&Product=ppt

 

[Phil49]

Hi Luc !!

First of all, thanks very much for your kind and prompt answer !

I'm gonna check out the KB article macro command and see if this could
make the trick for our teachers !

I'll let you know if it's ok !

Thx again,

PhiL.