Why can't the SharePoint Online tenant default language be changed?

Question

Our tenant was originally created in Dutch and we want to change it to English so all SharePoint site creation (via SharePoint, Teams, O365 Groups, OneDrive, etc.) default to English. Changing this is not currently possible.

Does anyone know why Microsoft has not enabled a setting to make this change? Is there some back-end design of SharePoint/M365 Tenant that makes it impossible for them to implement this? If so, does anyone know what it is?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi @Alex Carlock ,

Great to know your issue has been resolved and thanks for sharing the update here.

By the way, since the Microsoft Q&A community has a policy that "The question author cannot accept their own answer. They can only accept answers by others.". and according to the scenario introduced here: Answering your own questions on Microsoft Q&A, I would make a brief summary of this thread:

[Why can't the SharePoint Online tenant default language be changed?]

Issue Symptom:
Our tenant was originally created in Dutch and we want to change it to English so all SharePoint site creation (via SharePoint, Teams, O365 Groups, OneDrive, etc.) default to English. Changing this is not currently possible.

Does anyone know why Microsoft has not enabled a setting to make this change? Is there some back-end design of SharePoint/M365 Tenant that makes it impossible for them to implement this? If so, does anyone know what it is?

Current status:
We finally got to a helpful engineer at Microsoft and they deleted our root site and re-created it with our new preferred language. That means all future sites default to the new default language.

They told me that during the root site provisioning, many site/page templates are coded with the chosen language. They couldn't tell me why SharePoint is designed like that, but at least now I know that when adding new sites, various components are copies of the templates stored in the root site, rather than being dynamically built/configured during site creation.

My suggestion to anyone else is to push your engineer to delete the root site and re-create it. Keep in mind that any content and setting in the site will also be deleted, so you need to prepare for that. In our case, we had very little there and virtually all our content is in other site collections.

You could click the "Accept Answer" button for this summary to close this thread, and this can make it easier for other community members to see the useful information when reading this thread. Thanks for your understanding!

Answer 2

Emily. I missed your original response.

I am aware that this is by design and cannot be changed. My question is "Why?". What is the technical barrier preventing Microsoft form changing the design and allowing the change to a new default language? It seems like a very simple change on the surface: Change the default language ID in the "Default Language" field for the SharePoint tenant setting table in the database. But clearly, it's more complicated than that and I want to know what the complication is.

Thank you.

Answer 3

We finally got to a helpful engineer at Microsoft and they deleted our root site and re-created it with our new preferred language. That means all future sites default to the new default language.

They told me that during the root site provisioning, many site/page templates are coded with the chosen language. They couldn't tell me why SharePoint is designed like that, but at least now I know that when adding new sites, various components are copies of the templates stored in the root site, rather than being dynamically built/configured during site creation.

My suggestion to anyone else is to push your engineer to delete the root site and re-create it. Keep in mind that any content and setting in the site will also be deleted, so you need to prepare for that. In our case, we had very little there and virtually all our content is in other site collections.

Answer 4

Hi @Alex Carlock ,

Based on my research and testing, this is by design that tenant language cannot be modified.

You can change the language and region settings for user using PowerShell:

For all Microsoft 365 services (including OneDrive For Business, Delve, and SharePoint Online), you can change the language and region settings at the user level in a Cloud identity or Synchronized identity model by using Microsoft 365 PowerShell. Note Before you sync the settings, you should configure the alternative language settings on your SharePoint Online site. To do this, follow these steps:

1. On your team site, select Settings > Site settings.
2. In Site Administration, select Language settings.
3. On the Language Settings page, select the alternative languages that your site should support.
4. Click OK.

For all Microsoft 365 services except Exchange Online

Cloud identity model

To sync the settings by using a user ID, run the following example cmdlets after you substitute the actual values:

Get-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName user1@contoso.com | Set-MsolUser -PreferredLanguage "it-it" Get-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName user1@contoso.com | Set-MsolUser –UsageLocation IT

Synchronized identity model

To sync the settings by using an on-premises instance of Active Directory, run the following example cmdlets after you substitute the actual values:

Get-ADUser -SearchBase "OU=Italy,OU=Countries,DC=contoso,DC=com" -Filter * | Set-ADUser –replace @{PreferredLanguage="it-it"} Get-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName user1@contoso.com | Set-MsolUser –UsageLocation IT

Then, force the settings to sync through Azure AD Connect.

For more information, please refer to:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/troubleshoot/access-management/set-language-and-region

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/connect-to-microsoft-365-powershell?view=o365-worldwide

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Answer 5

Emily,

I have created suggestions, but they haven't been implemented. That is why I'm asking what the technical reason is for not implementing it. I hope that someone knows and can relay that information. If it needs to be kept confidential, someone from Microsoft could PM me and I could sign an NDA.