Operating system requirements for specific languages - Help and How-to

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Operating system requirements for specific languages

Applies to: Microsoft Office Access 2003, Excel 2003, FrontPage 2003, InfoPath 2003, Outlook 2003, PowerPoint 2003, Publisher 2003, Word 2003

Operating system requirements vary, depending on the language you're working with. If you want to type in an East Asian, South Asian, or Indic language, you may need to install additional operating system support, as specified in the following table.

Languages

Requirements

East Asian languages (Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean)

If the language version of Microsoft Windows XP or Microsoft Windows 2000 doesn't match the language that you want to type, you must install an Input Method Editor (IME) (IME: A program that enters East Asian text (Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, or Korean) into programs by converting keystrokes into complex East Asian characters. The IME is treated as an alternate type of keyboard layout.) to enter text. Additionally, Windows 2000 users must install additional support for that language (see the note following this table).

Learn more about IMEs and installing IMEs.

South Asian languages (Thai and Vietnamese), Baltic, Central European, Greek, Turkish, and languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet, or right-to-left languages

If the language version of Windows XP or Windows 2000 doesn't match the language that you want to type, you must install additional support for that language (see the note following this table).

Indic languages (Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Sanskrit, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu)

If the language version of Windows XP or Windows 2000 doesn't match the language that you want to type, you must install additional support for that language (see the note following this table).

Note Windows 2000 supports only Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, and Sanskrit. Windows XP supports only Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu.

Note For more information about installing additional language support, click the link in the See Also section, which is visible when you are connected to the Internet.