How to remove US English from the Windows 10 / Office 365 forever. Permanently.

Question

No matter what I do my computer keeps trying to use US English. I am a professional. This makes me look so stupid if I use US English in a document. I have been driven to distraction trying to remove it. I simply want US English removed from my computer so it can never turn up again. How do I do this please? I want it gone. Never to show up again.

Answer 1

With the greatest of respect to the respondents here (and I do have oodles of respect for volunteers that are trying to help), the OP is clearly asking for advice about the ability to:

• Eliminate the use of US English in all cases, and in every circumstance, at all levels and AT ALL TIMES.

It is so offensive to those of us that are not American, but live and breath English as our first language, that most if not all of our documents default to US English despite our repeated attempts to avoid that. On average, it's not uncommon to have up to 100 spelling and grammar errors (for our audience) when this occurs. It is unprofessional and ridiculously counter-productive.

I appreciate the highly technical answers such as editing custom dictionaries and use of Macros as suggestions, but for some of us, that just isn't seen as a safe option as we are simply not sufficiently technical to trust ourselves to achieve those.

And I also appreciate the claim that Microsoft isn't listening here. In fact, Microsoft simply aren't ever listening anywhere. No amount of complaints and feedback submissions has caused them to think that this simplest of features is a priority. I know, because I've been trying for more then 16 years on this very point.

Again, thanks to the volunteers who have tried to help. But this won't ever be fixed in a simple way. Microsoft just don't care enough.

Answer 2

You want English UK to be the spelling. Good.
See my article on this at https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/proofing-language-keeps-changing-solutions-how-can/c6483d0c-6fe3-41bf-8464-25535d3ec15b
It has many of the points made by Stefan.

Answer 3

I have exactly the same thing here. Outlook keeps adding Z's.

My keyboard is set to UK, I even removed US English from preferred languages but they keep coming back.

Answer 4

I finally managed to get Word to stop reverting to US English after years of repeatedly changing the default proofing language to no avail. I switched from US English to Australian English. To get Word to stop reverting to US English, I had to change my Windows display language, which was US English even though I chose Australian English when I was setting up my computer.

Here's the method that worked for me:

In the Settings app, go to Time & Language > Language & Region.

Under Language, there is a drop down menu allowing you to choose the Windows display language. Select the language you would like to use, then sign out as prompted for changes to take effect.

If there are no other options in the drop down menu, click on add a language and install the language pack and every other available option for your desired language. Once this has installed, you should be able to change your display language.

In my case, during set up Windows had only installed "basic typing" and "handwriting recognition" for Australian English, not the "language pack". Once the language pack was installed (which I was able to do by clicking on the three dots next to English (Australia) on the two bars with English (US) and English (Australia) on them below the preferred languages bar), I was able to change my display language, and Word no longer defaults to US English as the proofing language. Even OneNote now uses Australian English, which I had never been able to get it to do at all before.

This doesn't solve the problem if you do actually want to use multiple languages at different times, particularly if you often need to type in a language you don't want to use as your Windows display language, but at least it might help some people.