Changing the Language for All Styles

Mary Anne works as an academic editor, and she lives and works in Canada. She finds that most clients, no matter where they live on the continent, submit their documents to her in US English. If she selects all and changes the proofing language, the text changes to Canadian English but the styles do not. Mary Anne wonders if there is a way to change all the styles in a document to Canadian English, or if she must change each style individually.

There are a few things you can try to get the styles changed. First, you may want to open the document and make the language change in the Normal style. If all the other styles in the document are based on the Normal style—as is often the case, particularly if the author didn't pay much attention to styles—then all the styles lower in the hierarchy should change, as well.

Another approach is to create your own template, using the language of your choice, and then attach that template to any incoming documents. You could also, if you prefer, use the Organizer to copy styles from your template (or a previous document you know is "good") to the document on which you are now working.

Finally, you may want to use a macro to effect the language changes. There's a nice example of such a macro at this page:

https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2018/09/21/word-macro-to-set-the-language-for-all-styles/

I'll copy the heart of that macro, with a few modest changes, here just in case the original goes away for some reason. (That happens on the Internet, as we are all aware.)

Sub ChangeStyleLanguage()
    Dim s As Style

    With ActiveDocument
        For Each s In .Styles
            On Error Resume Next
            s.LanguageID = wdEnglishCanadian
            On Error GoTo 0
        Next s
    End With
End Sub

The heart of the macro is the line that sets the .LanguageID property. In the adapted example here, the language is being set to Canadian English. You can find a detailed list of various language IDs at the following Microsoft page:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/word.wdlanguageid

If you try the macro and it doesn't work, typically that is because you may not have language support for the desired language on your system. In their documentation for the .LanguageID property, Microsoft states that "some of the wdLanguageID constants may not be available to you, depending on the language support that you've selected or installed." In Mary Anne's case, however, it is doubtful that this will be a problem.

Once you have the macro just the way you want, add it to your Quick Access Toolbar and you are all set to go.

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