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MS Word changes default language when pasting

Anonymous
2019-01-23T01:17:28+00:00

MS Word automatically resets my default language from English (Canada) to English (US) anytime I paste text into a document, regardless of the original source (and if that was in Canadian English). It's super annoying and I'd love for it not to happen. I'm using MS Word for Mac 2019 on a MacBook Pro with Mojave OS.

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Stefan Blom 342.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2019-01-25T12:19:50+00:00

Has English (Canada) been successfully set as your default for new documents? In that case, pasting content from another document in plain text format should preserve the language formatting.

For existing documents, changing the default won't make a difference. You can try to modify the language of the Normal style (which is the "parent" for most other styles in Word) but sometimes you have no other choice than to (re-)apply the correct language format after having selected all the content in a document.

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-01-23T13:04:04+00:00

    Hi Justin,

    The issue persists, unfortunately, even with "detect language automatically" unchecked. It happens in multiple documents, and even has happened when I've pasted from a document set in Canadian English to another document set in Canadian English.

    MS Word 16.21

    Apple Mojave 10.14.2

    Thank you.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-01-23T02:01:54+00:00

    Yes, I have tried both of those and neither fix the glitch. It's quite infuriating (even if it is relatively easy to keep switching the default language back to Canadian English).

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-01-23T04:01:29+00:00

    Hi KScallion,

    We've tested this and it can happen if "Detect language automatically" is checked in Review > Language. Please uncheck it and see if you still encounter the problem.

    If the issue persists, kindly provide us the following:

    1. Your Office version and build. Open Word > Word > About Word
    2. Your MacOS version. Apple icon > About this Mac
    3. Does this happen only to a specific document? You can try to create a new one to verify if it's file related issue.

    Regards,

    Justin

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-01-23T01:55:15+00:00

    Hi, how are you, thanks for posting in our Microsoft Community. Did you try to use Edit> Paste Special- Unformatted Text or use Edit> Paste and Match Formatting to avoid the issue?

    Hope above suggestions help you and let me know how it goes!

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