Office / VBE Language Issues (BUGS?)

[isladogs]

I would be very grateful for anyone with English (United Kingdom) Office willing to check an Office language issue I’ve experienced for several months.

After changing Office languages from English (United Kingdom) to e.g. Spanish (Spain) and back again, I consistently find that the Office language reverts to English but the VBE language does not change back. For example:

Back in December last year, I wrote an article about this issue at Office/VBE Menu Lang Glitch (isladogs.co.uk).
At the time I reported it to the Access team but thought it was an artefact on one workstation of mine

However, I updated the article today after doing further tests with other languages and also replicating the issue on a second workstation

I now believe this is a bug but it would help to have confirmation (or otherwse) from others. Full details are in the article but here is an outline of the issue

Prerequisites:

• Access 365 32-bit or 64-bit
• Office language – English (United Kingdom) – NOT English (United States)
• At least one other non-English Office language installed for testing

Steps to reproduce:

• In Access options change the default language to e.g. Spanish, French, German. Close and restart Office. Both the Office & VBE menus will correctly change to the specified language
• Change the default language back to English (United Kingdom). Close and restart Office. Do you see the Office language revert to English but the VBE menus in the other language? If so, this will affect all Office apps as the VBE settings are common to all

Don't panic. Its easily fixable!

Steps to fix:
Any of the following should restore the VBE menus to English:

• Move the second language further down in the language options sort order
• Change to Match Microsoft Windows (English (United Kingdom))
• Change to English (United States)

In each case, you will need to restart Access / Office

On a possibly related subject, the Access team supposedly fixed a grammatically incorrect caption/control tip for English (United Kingdom) installations in version 2403 (March 2024)

See Access Releases 11 Issue Fixes in Version 2403 (Released March 27th, 2024) (microsoft.com)

On both my English (United Kingdom) workstations running en-gb Office 365 Version 2404 (Current Channel )Preview) and 2405 (Beta) and it still reads Alternative Row Colour on both the Home & Form Datasheet ribbons. For en-us Office, it correctly reads Alternate Row Color.

Whilst somewhat trivial, it clearly hasn’t been fixed (on my two workstations)

I’m going to contact the Access team again in a couple of days about both issues so would appreciate any feedback on both items (whether or not you have the same results as me). They are more likely to fix unusual bugs like these if these can be reproduced by several people

 

[mike60smart]

I would be very grateful for anyone with English (United Kingdom) Office willing to check an Office language issue I’ve experienced for several months.

After changing Office languages from English (United Kingdom) to e.g. Spanish (Spain) and back again, I consistently find that the Office language reverts to English but the VBE language does not change back. For example:

View attachment 113861

Back in December last year, I wrote an article about this issue at Office/VBE Menu Lang Glitch (isladogs.co.uk).
At the time I reported it to the Access team but thought it was an artefact on one workstation of mine

However, I updated the article today after doing further tests with other languages and also replicating the issue on a second workstation

I now believe this is a bug but it would help to have confirmation (or otherwse) from others. Full details are in the article but here is an outline of the issue

Prerequisites:

• Access 365 32-bit or 64-bit
• Office language – English (United Kingdom) – NOT English (United States)
• At least one other non-English Office language installed for testing

Steps to reproduce:

• In Access options change the default language to e.g. Spanish, French, German. Close and restart Office. Both the Office & VBE menus will correctly change to the specified language
• Change the default language back to English (United Kingdom). Close and restart Office. Do you see the Office language revert to English but the VBE menus in the other language? If so, this will affect all Office apps as the VBE settings are common to all

Don't panic. Its easily fixable!

Steps to fix:
Any of the following should restore the VBE menus to English:

• Move the second language further down in the language options sort order
• Change to Match Microsoft Windows (English (United Kingdom))
• Change to English (United States)

In each case, you will need to restart Access / Office

View attachment 113866

On a possibly related subject, the Access team supposedly fixed a grammatically incorrect caption/control tip for English (United Kingdom) installations in version 2403 (March 2024)

View attachment 113863

See Access Releases 11 Issue Fixes in Version 2403 (Released March 27th, 2024) (microsoft.com)

On both my English (United Kingdom) workstations running en-gb Office 365 Version 2404 (Current Channel )Preview) and 2405 (Beta) and it still reads Alternative Row Colour on both the Home & Form Datasheet ribbons. For en-us Office, it correctly reads Alternate Row Color.

View attachment 113864

View attachment 113865

Whilst somewhat trivial, it clearly hasn’t been fixed (on my two workstations)

I’m going to contact the Access team again in a couple of days about both issues so would appreciate any feedback on both items (whether or not you have the same results as me). They are more likely to fix unusual bugs like these if these can be reproduced by several people

Hi Colin

I added additional languages and defaulted to Spanish.
Restarted and both Menus in Spanish.
Reset to English and restarted and both Menus now revert to English.

Also the Command button reads as Alternate Row Color.

 

[isladogs]

Hi Mike
Thanks for testing but your Office language is English (United States) as you can tell by the US spelling of Color rather than the UK Colour. Neither problem apples to the default language install of US English
If you are willing to install English (United Kingdom) and re-test that would be appreciated

 

[mike60smart]

Hi Colin

I believe I have English (United Kingdom) installed.

 

[mike60smart]

Hi Colin

OK I changed my settings to those shown in the attached screenshot.

And like you the VBE language remains in Spanish.

 

[isladogs]

No - that's English (United States) which is the language installed by default.
You can choose English (United Kingdom) when installing Office or add it later. If you had English (United Kingdom) you would see Colour instead of Color in the ribbon and in Access Options ... Language you would see this:

Also have a look in Settings ... Apps ... Apps & features. I have the following entries for Microsoft 365

Notice the lack of consistency here: en-gb corresponds to English (United Kingdom)

I also have various language packs for several additional languages:

 

[mike60smart]

No - that's English (United States) which is the language installed by default.
You can choose English (United Kingdom) when installing Office or add it later. If you had English (United Kingdom) you would see Colour instead of Color in the ribbon and in Access Options ... Language you would see this:

View attachment 113887

Also have a look in Settings ... Apps ... Apps & features. I have the following entries for Microsoft 365

View attachment 113889
Notice the lack of consistency here: en-gb corresponds to English (United Kingdom)

I also have various language packs for several additional languages:

View attachment 113890

Hi Colin

OK I set my language settings as follows:-

When I changed to Spanish and then back to English all of my Menu's are in English.
Also the Alternate Row button now has Colour vice Color.

 

[isladogs]

Excellent. It works correctly for you which is interesting as until now, those who have responded have had the same results as me.
I wonder if that's because your Windows language is English (United States) whereas mine is English (United Kingdom)

Please can you tell me which version, build and bitness of Access you have.
For example, I have Office 365 Version 2405 (Beta) build 17616.20002 32-bit

 

[mike60smart]

Excellent. It works correctly for you which is interesting as until now, those who have responded have had the same results as me.
I wonder if that's because your Windows language is English (United States) whereas mine is English (United Kingdom)

Please can you tell me which version, build and bitness of Access you have.
For example, I have Office 365 Version 2405 (Beta) build 17616.20002 32-bit

Hi Colin
Mine is as shown below:-

 

[isladogs]

Sorry to be a pain but the info on that page isn't always accurate.
What does it show next to About Access

 

[mike60smart]

Hi Colin

My build is as follows:-

 

[isladogs]

Thank you for your feedback.
I just realised that I missed your very helpful post #5 earlier!

And like you the VBE language remains in Spanish.

Good to get confirmation on that point - I will go back to the Access team on that point.
Hopefully you have restored it to English using one of my workarounds

And just to double check, does your ribbon say Alternative Row Colour or Alternate Row Colour?

 

[mike60smart]

Thank you for your feedback.
I just realised that I missed your very helpful post #5 earlier!


Good to get confirmation on that point - I will go back to the Access team on that point.
Hopefully you have restored it to English using one of my workarounds

And just to double check, does your ribbon say Alternative Row Colour or Alternate Row Colour?

Hi Colin

It is in English - Colour vice Color

 

[isladogs]

Hi Mike
Yes I know but does it still wrongly say Alternative or has that been changed to Alternate (see post #1 screenshots)

 

[mike60smart]

Hi Colin

It says Alternative

 

[isladogs]

Thank you