PowerPoint 2016 for Mac language bug

Question

There is a bug present in version 15.33 (170409) of Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac, and all previous versions of the 2016 release as far as I'm aware.

Any pasted English text will override the default language setting to English (United States).  This will ignore the local macOS language setting, and the language of the text being copied from.  

For example, if the text "This is a bug" from a plain text file (i.e. UTF-8 encoding) is copied, and then pasted into any slide, the language will change from the default language to English (United States) for that object.  If the word "Colour" is copied from a plain text file and then pasted into any slide, it will change the language, and then suggest a spelling mistake.

Uninstalling Office, and removing all residual Application Data and Library files, and then reinstalling using a freshly downloaded install file from Microsoft does not resolve the error.  There is no option to turn off automatic language detection in the Preferences menus.  Microsoft support are unable to help, and don't appear to acknowledge that this is an issue for non English (US) users.

Since Microsoft has no portal that allows users to register bugs for Office, short of social media, this seems to be the only way to notify them of the problem.

Answer 1

Not just all previous versions of the 2016 release, but all previous versions of PowerPoint as well as the other programs in the Office suite, Mac or PC :-)

Jim is correct - Language is not a global document setting, it's an attribute of the text, itself. The OS X Language setting has no bearing on anything other than the default for new files you create, the new slides you insert, & any new Placeholders or Text Boxes you create in the file. Further to that, programs will not arbitrarily change the Language property of pasted text any more than they will alter its other formatting attributes [although there are some possible exceptions, such as font color controlled by Themes].

Unfortunately, Language is not a visible attribute, such as Bold or Italic, so it's impossible to determine simply by looking at the characters or the spelling. Also, in most programs that support multiple languages you can format any text string you choose as being any language you want it to be... The word colour - spelled exactly that way - can be "tagged" as being Chinese, Slovak, Hebrew, or just about any other language you choose to apply.

Automatic Language Detection in Mac Office pertains only to an aspect of the Spelling & Grammar checking machinery. The machinery detects the language formatting of the text being checked, then uses the corresponding Proofing Tools [if available] on the fly. If no Proofing Tools are available for that language the text is not checked.

To avoid the behavior you either can:

• Use the Paste Options button which appears after pasting to select Keep Text Only, but the down side to that can be that all formatting will be removed. Or,
• Use Edit> Paste Special [Command+Control+V] & choose Unformatted Text. Or,
• After pasting, select the text or its container, then go to Tools> Language to apply the preferred language.

Answer 2

Hi Guy,

MVP’s have provided you detailed description and workaround in the above posts. As you mentioned, Word for mac has a check box in Language option to turn this feature off and it is missing in PowerPoint, for this I’ll suggest you provide your feedback in PowerPoint for mac Uservoice. UserVoice is the best place to provide the feedback to Product Group.

Regards,

Neha

Answer 3

Jim is correct - Language is not a global document setting, it's an attribute of the text, itself. 

Hi Bob, I appreciate the detailed reply. 

This was my first thought as well, which why I tested it by copying from UTF-8 encoded plain text files (pure unicode, with no other attritributes).   It actually appears to ignore the source language attribute.  Any English text when pasted will be changed to English (United States).  The only exception to this appears to be text from other Office products, which will carry their language attribute over.

The bug appears to be coming from the automatic language detection feature, which will override in my case - English (Australian) with English (United States).  

Paste options, or changing the language setting after each paste corrects the issue, but gets very tedious when you're creating 100+ slides per week with a mix of pasted text, and text that needs to be proofed for spelling and grammar.  Word 2016 for Mac allows you to turn this feature off with a simple checkbox in the Language options.  This checkbox is missing from PowerPoint.

Answer 4

Hi Guy,

Welcome to the discussion forum.

If my understanding is correct, the language of copied text is an attribute of the text, just like font and color. For example, if you copy French text and paste it, the French language is kept for the text you paste. That is the behavior I expect, at least.

I am glad you found this forum. Here you can bring up any issues and make comments. You did an excellent job by providing the version information (so many people forget to do this). Thank you!

There is a built-in mechanism for reporting bugs. Look for a little Smile symbol in the PowerPoint interface. It's a button that provides a window you can use to report bugs.