Office 2000 makes it easier than ever to work with information worldwide. Office programs are based on a single worldwide executable and utilize the Unicode text encoding standard. This means that no matter what language version of Office you are using, you can display, enter, edit, and print text in most European, East Asian, or right-to-left languages (provided that your operating system supports the characters specific to that language).

Using multilingual features to work with text in different languages

A number of Office tools and features, many of which are built into Office programs, simplify the way you work with text in different languages.

For example, if you are working in the English version of Microsoft Word but want to also type text in Russian, you can add a Russian keyboard layout to your system through Control Panel, enable Russian for editing, and turn on automatic language detection in Word. When you type in English, Word recognizes the text as English. But as soon as you begin typing in Russian, Word automatically detects the language and optimizes itself for Russian.

Here are some other examples of multilingual tools and features:

AutoCorrect   AutoCorrect now corrects errors according to the language you're typing rather than using the same list of errors for all languages. Office 2000 ships with AutoCorrect lists for several popular languages; lists for other languages are available in Microsoft Office 2000 Proofing Tools.

Automatic Language Detection in Word   When you open a document or enter text, Word can automatically detect the language of the text and apply the spelling and grammar dictionaries, punctuation rules, and sorting conventions for that language.

Spelling checkers and other proofing tools  Office 2000 ships with spelling checkers and other tools for several popular languages; tools for other languages are available in Office 2000 Proofing Tools.

Web page support  You can create multilingual Web pages and intranet content in any of the Office programs.

East Asian character support  If your operating system language does not support the East Asian language you want to type in, you can use a special program called a Global Input Method Editor (Global IME). The Global IME enables you to type East Asian characters in:

• A Word 2000 document.
• A Microsoft Outlook® 98 or later, or Microsoft Outlook Express 4.0 or later, e-mail message.
• A Web page viewed in Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or later.

Text editing in right-to-left languages  On a system that supports right-to-left languages such as Arabic or Hebrew, you can edit text in those languages, and Office programs display and format them correctly.

Visual keyboard layout  If you change your keyboard layout in order to type characters in a different language, the characters that appear on your screen may no longer correspond to the characters printed on your keyboard. Microsoft Visual Keyboard is an on-screen visual keyboard layout program that shows you the keyboard layout that corresponds to the language your keyboard is set to.

Changing the language of the user interface or online Help

Multinational organizations that have standardized on the English version of Office can use Microsoft Office 2000 MultiLanguage Pack to provide added benefit to members of their organization worldwide.

Office 2000 MultiLanguage Pack adds key multilingual capabilities to those already built into Office by providing the translated text for the user interface, online help, wizards, and templates for Office programs. By using MultiLanguage Pack, you can view commands, dialog box options, online help topics, wizards, and templates in a familiar language.

MultiLanguage Pack also includes Office 2000 Proofing Tools, which provides fonts, spelling and grammar checkers, AutoCorrect lists, and other tools that can help you create and edit Office documents in the language of your choice.

How to obtain multilingual tools that aren't built into Office

While much multilingual capability is built in to Office programs, the MultiLanguage Pack, Proofing Tools, Visual Keyboard, and Global IMEs are not. Here's how you can obtain them.

More information

For more information about multilingual features in Office, type multilingual in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab in your Office 2000 program, and then click Search.

For more information about MultiLanguage Pack or Proofing Tools, type each product name in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab in your Office 2000 program, and then click Search.