Keyboard Layout affects Proofing language in Office 365 apps

Question

Keyboard Layout affects Proofing language in Office 365 apps

Good day,

I recently purchased a MacBook Air M1, in Germany and my Keyboard layout is QWERTZ.

On my Mac I will predominantly write in English.

My Macs region is set to Germany.

My 'Primary' language is set to English.

However my proofing language in Office 365 apps defaults to German, I guess this is because my region is set to Germany and my Keyboard layout is set to QWERTZ.

On a windows machine I can set English as the proofing language and still use the QWERTZ layout.

I have an extensive Microsoft OneNote notebook which I would like to use on my Mac, however it appears that the notebook defaults proofing to German based on one of the variables above.

I don't want to set the input to English under Keyboard preferences because that inout method only supports QWERTY layout...

Is there a way I can combine English input with the QWERTZ layout under 'Keyboard Preferences'?

Many thanks in advance!

Best Regards.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.0

Posted on Nov 10, 2021 4:21 PM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

121,998 points

Nov 11, 2021 4:44 AM in response to kyle-James_069

I think the only way is probably to make custom keyboard layout.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-to-keep-word-for-mac-from-changing-spellcheck/edd2a607-4bec-4bea-80be-b3959fee5029

You could try LibreOffice instead, but I don't know if it can read OneNote.

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

121,998 points

Nov 13, 2021 4:47 AM in response to kyle-James_069

kyle-James_069 wrote:

The only problem which still remains is that I can't force the proofing to UK English.

You should be able to do with by editing that keyboard bundle with ukulele to change the language from en to en-gb

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

121,998 points

Nov 13, 2021 8:21 AM in response to kyle-James_069

I find that if I put my keyboard on British to start with, then I can switch to the German en-GB and Word will stay on English (United Kingdom), if that is of any value.

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Answer 4

Nov 13, 2021 8:08 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

You are correct. I was able to create a Keyboard layout with en-GB as the language.

Under the language for the keyboard layout I set it to English, and the Region to United Kingdom and the language was then Recognised as en-GB for the Keyboard Layout.

I tried installing and uninstalling the layout several times and also recreating it a few times. Still no luck.

Microsoft Onenote still defaults the proofing to English (United States), even though the keyboard layout has en-GB set as the language in Ukelele prior to installing and setting as the input source.

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Answer 5

Nov 13, 2021 4:36 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thank you very much Tom!

This mostly solved my issue. The keyboard layout you shared here along with the ukelele app.

The only problem which still remains is that I can't force the proofing to UK English. Not a major issue, but it is still bothersome to my eye seeing the spelling differences between US and UK English highlighted.

Thanks again for your help setting me on the right track.

Microsoft really need to improve these language options for their Mac apps. All other apps I am using thus far on the Mac are operating as I presume every person working with multiple languages would expect!

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