It's possible to work with many different languages in Microsoft Office 2000 programs such as Word 2000, Outlook® 2000, Excel 2000, Access 2000, PowerPoint® 2000, FrontPage® 2000, and Publisher 2000. Before you begin working in a different language, though, there are some steps you'll need to take to set up Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows® or Windows NT®. This article outlines the necessary steps.

Use the right version of Microsoft Windows

Most international features work with any version of Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Windows NT, but if you're working with an East Asian language or a European language that uses a non-Latin font (for example, Greek, Russian, or many Eastern European languages), some versions of Windows will work better than others. Windows 2000 provides the most support for the most languages.

If you are working with a right-to-left language such as Arabic or Hebrew, and your language version of Windows doesn't match the right-to-left language you want to type, you must use Windows 2000.

For more information about requirements for these types of languages, type multilanguage requirements in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab in the Help window of your Office program, and then click Search.

Install system support for the language

Installing Office 2000 provides many of the files you need to work with text in other languages. However, if both of the following are true, you need to install additional Windows system support:

• You want to type text in a Baltic, Eastern European, or Asian language; Turkish or Greek; a language that uses the Cyrillic alphabet; or a right-to-left language (Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, or Urdu).
• Your language version of Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows 2000 doesn't match the language you want to type. (Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 has multilanguage system support pre-installed.)

Installing system support is a simple step that you take in Control Panel.

To install multilanguage system support in Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows 2000

1. On the Windows Start menu, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
2. Do one of the following:
   • In Windows 95 or Windows 98, double-click the Add/Remove Programs icon, and then click the Windows Setup tab.
   • In Windows 2000, double-click the Regional Options icon, and then click the General tab.
3. Do one of the following:
   • In Windows 95 or Windows 98, click Multilanguage Support in the Components list, and then click Details. Then select the check boxes next to the language you want to use.
   • In Windows 2000, select the check box next to the language group you want under Language settings for the system.
4. Repeat step 3 for each language you want to use.

Enable the language for editing

Before taking advantage of the multilingual features Office 2000 has to offer for any language, you must first do what is known as enabling the language for editing. This turns on Office features specific to the language and optimizes each Office program for the language. To learn more, read Enable a different language for editing in Office.

Install and use the correct keyboard layout

Different languages are comprised of different characters and alphabets. Before typing in a different language, you may need to install and switch to the correct keyboard layout for the language. Once you do that, you can also view the new keyboard layout on screen using Microsoft Visual Keyboard (Visual Keyboard is not available for Publisher 2000). To learn more, read Set up your keyboard to work in another language in Office.