US spelling when all settings to Aus?

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Guest

HI All,

I have XP Pro on a company machine, so it is networked and to some extent
everything is chosen/set up for me.

I have checked all my language settings in all places recommended in other
posts (I've done a pretty thorough search), and in all places it is
displaying as English (Australian). The dictionary in Word is using
Australian English and spell checks to that. However, my toolbars/menus are
showing US spelling (favorites instead of favourites). Whilst it doesn't do
any actual harm to the computer and I still understand it, it is a little
disconcerting. Has anyone seen this problem/inconsistency before and do you
know where the glitch might lie?

Thanks,

Fiona
 
There is no problem. It's supposed to. All english versions are the same. And don't whinge (sure you aren't a pom), it's far worse for programmers as

object.colour

will cause errors.
 
Hi,

Just for your reference,

If you are using Office XP or 2003, you should be able to see a shortcut
called - Microsoft Office 2003 (or XP) Language Settings, usually located at
All Programs, Microsoft Office 2003 (or version name), Microsoft Office
Tools.

Click the shortcut and see how many languages are enabled (on the right side
of panel) and which one is being set as the default? The default one is
grayed out.

To add more languages, select from left and click add, and do the opposite
way for removing. To set the default language applied to all Office
programs, select one from the pull-down menu at the bottom (in your case,
shall be English (US) and click OK.

To make sure everything is done correctly, open Word and select Tools,
Language, Set Language, and check if English (US) has been checked as the
default language for spelling? If so, it will have a check mark with "ABC"
on top of the check mark. If not, point it and click "Default".

Hope this helps.
 
David,

I think you misunderstood. I wasn't whinging, just asking. It's something
I hadn't noticed in earlier versions of Windows and was curious to see if it
was XP specific. That's all.
 
Thanks xfile. I'm actually trying to get all spelling to Australian English,
but I see what you mean. That language option was defaulted to the correct
option as well. Seems like it is a mystery of Microsoft. :-) (Or possibly the
package bought by the company). Thanks again for taking the time to go
through this.

Fiona
 
All versions of Windows. All programming languages. Only keyboards are different between languages (and we use the US keyboard cos we also use dollars) and measurements but any english language computer can do any other english language. But not spelling of the user interface.
 
Hi,

You are welcome.

Sometime, it will get confused, especially there are more than one language
installed and used by Windows or Office.

One of my laptops with ALL English (US) has no problem at all. Others with
additional languages installed (by Office and Windows) for working under
multi-languages environment would be "confused" once a while.

Anyway, good luck.
 
Applications like Word and Outlook are very specifically written for many
languages. That's why you can choose a raft of them when you spell check,
but you need to buy the right version for your country.
Windows also comes in various languages, but the version for English
speaking folks including Poms, Aussies and Kiwis is English (US). <---- See
the period? This means you will get "favorites", and "color" in the help
files and so on and nothing will change that, nothing, unless Microsoft
decide to change the spelling around one day for non US English variants.
That day will come when Windows is available for free.... :)

BTW please don't rename favorites, this is a system folder and will totally
wreck your XP installation if you persist.
 
Ozzies cus we are from the land of Oz. Everyone is called dorothy just like in Kansas.
 
Perhaps Dorothy moved to Seattle, Redmond city district?

"David Candy" <.> wrote in message
Ozzies cus we are from the land of Oz. Everyone is called dorothy just like
in Kansas.
 
Gary and David

Thanks for the explanation. I'm really used to the view of Windows in
earlier versions, so I guess anything *odd* stuck out <g>.

It would never really occur to me to change the system folder names! But
I'll definitely keep that advice in mind...

Fiona
 
Hi Fiona,

As other people have stated the user interface you are using is US English.

For Windows XP you can't change this to my knowledge. This is a limitation
of the program.

Not all programs have this limitation.

For example with the Opera browser I have produced an Australian English
language user interface. It is thus possible to change the user interface
language for Opera to an Australian English user interface, as it is allowed
by the program.

Windows XP to my knowledge does not allow for this, so we are stuck with US
English in Australia for the user interface.

You mentioned you felt this was not the case with earlier versions of
Windows. If you check you will find Windows 98 also used US English. For
example on the Desktop is "Network Neighborhood". Checking through the
dialogues you will also see the word "color".

What I believe has happened is there are now many more words in the user
interface which you see more often. The word "favorites" is a very good
example. What you see as an issue has been there for many years, it is just
more obvious now.

So it is not a bug or a glitch. It is just a design limitation of the
program. This is not unique to Microsoft products. It is very common for a
lot of software.

With the spell checking software many people prefer to use the "ise" and not
the "ize" spelling variation as they incorrectly see "ize" as only being the
Amercain spelling.

In Australia it is generally acceptable to use both spellings. For example,
whilst "organise" is the more popular way to spell the word in Australia,
"organize" is also acceptable in Australia.

If you want to have "organize" marked as incorrect (and around 1,800 other
words) there is an Exclude file available at
http://www.justlocal.com.au/clients/oooau/.

A more obvious example for Australian users is the word "mom", which is in
the Australian English spell check dictionary for MS Word. The Exclude files
fixes this issue.

Lately I have found a number of people getting confused with the way to
spell words in Australia because of the software we use, so you are not alone.

How many times do you see the word "canceled" appear when working with your
software?

I too would appreciate having an Australian English language user interface.

I hope this information helps.
 
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