Add and Remove Proofing Dictionaries for Foreign Languages in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

PowerPoint includes proofing tools (spelling dictionaries, thesauri, and grammar rules) for more than one language. If you use English as your main language, then Spanish and French dictionaries may be already installed. This enables you to spell check Spanish and French words. Want to know which languages are available for proofing for your version of PowerPoint? Scroll down this page to see a table with all the details you need.

To proof text in a foreign language, you need to install and enable proofing tools for the language you require. When these tools are installed, you can tell PowerPoint if a particular text placeholder or text box needs to be proofed as a foreign language. We will cover the actual process of proofing in a foreign language later in a subsequent tutorial. First, you need to learn how you can ascertain which proofing tools are installed on your computer, and how you can add proofing tools for languages besides English within PowerPoint:

1. Launch PowerPoint 2013, and access the Review tab of the Ribbon, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1.
2. 
   Figure 1: Review tab of the Ribbon
2. Within the Review tab, click the Language button (highlighted in red within Figure 2). This brings up a drop-down menu, as shown in Figure 2. Within the drop-down menu click the Language Preferences option (highlighted in blue within Figure 2).
3. 
   Figure 2: Language drop-down menu
3. This summons the PowerPoint Options dialog box along with the Language pane selected in the sidebar, as shown in Figure 3.
4. 
   Figure 3: Language options within PowerPoint Options dialog box
5. Within the Choose Editing Languages section, you can see which proofing dictionaries are currently available (highlighted in red within Figure 3). In Figure 3 above, you can see only one dictionary listed.
6. To install more dictionaries, open the Add additional editing languages drop-down list by clicking the option with the same name (highlighted in blue within Figure 3 above).
4. Within the drop-down list scroll down to see which other languages are available, and click the language of your choice. For this tutorial, we choose French (France), as shown in Figure 4.
5. 
   Figure 4: Drop-down list displaying all the editing languages available
5. As soon as the language is selected, the Add button (highlighted in red within Figure 5) is activated. Click the Add button to include this new language to the proofing list.
6. 
   Figure 5: Select a language to add it to the proofing list
7. In some cases, you may be asked to insert your CD or DVD that contains the setup files for Office 2013. In many cases, Office 2013 retains setup files on the same computer where it has been installed, and may not ask you to insert ant CD or DVD media. In other scenarios, and this is also the case if you used an online install option. You may not even be asked to insert any media. Instead, you will see a Not installed status (as shown highlighted in red for Hindi within Figure 6, below), which essentially is a link that can be clicked. Clicking this link takes you to the download site from where you can buy and access additional files to enable proofing for this language.
8. 
   Figure 6: Selected language not installed
6. Either way, you will end up with adding the selected language dictionary to your proofing list, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 7.
7. 
   Figure 7: Selected language added to the Editing language list
Note: Adding a dictionary only enables that language for proofing. No keyboard layouts or menu options change. Those options are beyond the scope of this tutorial. Also, any languages you add are available across all Office 2013 applications such as Word, Excel, Outlook, etc. and are not limited to PowerPoint alone.
7. At this point, you can set any of the installed proofing tools as default by clicking the Set as Default button (highlighted in green within Figure 7, above). To remove any proofing tools you might have installed in the past, select the editing language you want to remove and then click the Remove button (highlighted in blue within Figure 7, above).

If you have the English version of Microsoft Office 2013 installed, then you also have proofing tools for French and Spanish installed in addition to English. This information from Microsoft provides details about the proofing tools available in various localized versions of the Office 2013 suite:

More information on localized versions of Office 2013 and the proofing tools can be found on Microsoft's web site.