OneDrive for Business: How to Change the Alternate Language
This is a common issue nowadays: users are creating subscriptions for Office 365 and their whole tenant is provisioned in the language dictated by their browser.
Example: user is from Netherlands, goes to the Microsoft site to subscribe to Office 365, the language for the Microsoft site is Dutch so his subscription will be in Dutch.
Then, the admin realizes that not all his users "love" the Dutch language and would prefer for example English. Since using the alternate language is sometimes tricky I decided to post a step by step tutorial.
First we need to change the language for Office365
Login to office 365 using :https://portal.office.com
Click the cogwheel from top right corner and then Office 365 settings
In the office 365 settings click on language
Choose the preferred language and click save
The language for Office 365 will be changed almost instantly
Change the language for the About me section
Click the user's picture and click on About me
On the next page click on edit your profile( top right corner)
Click the 3 dots( ellipsis) and then on Language and region
Remove the existing language from My display language( if any), choose your preferred language and press add
Click on Save all and close
You will be informed that : Your changes have been saved, but they may take some time to take effect. Don't worry if you don't see them right away.
Click ok
Last step is to change the language for the Onedrive site
Click Onedrive
Click the cogwheel ( top right) and go to Site Settings
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In the Site settings, under Site administration click on Language Settings
Select the desired language under Alternate language and check to select “Yes” under Overwrite Translations
Press OK
The changing of the language for Onedrive may take a while, if it does not change you will have to log out, wait a few minutes and then log in back again
What happens for example if you have to change this for 800 users? The process can be automatized by using PowerShell but this will be done only for the Office 365 settings; for Onedrive, every user will have to change it manually. Another option would be that the default language for the My site host to be changed.
Best option to avoid this situation is to create the tenant from the beginning with the desired language. In order to do that you have to go to http://office.microsoft.com/ and to select at the top right corner the correct country. If you choose Netherlands, the language will be Dutch, so in order to have the tenant in English you have to choose United States or better UK , so you would have the tenant in one of the Data centers in Europe.