Language setting in Calc

users
#1

Good evening
In my line of work (translator) I often forced to use MS Office files.
Right now I am working with an Excel worksheet.
I am not allowed to change file name, format or anything else am only supposed to enter
the German translation of a Japanese text into the designated columns.

Fine so far.
The original file is so formatted that there are font settings for English and Japanese.
When I work at home (right now) I select the relevant columns and change the language setting to German.
But when I go to my little work place and open the same file there, the language in those columns is back to English.
I changed it in my office to German again, but once I am home and start working here, it is back to English again.

Is there a way to tell Excel files to use a specific language AND STAY THAT WAY?

It would reduce unnecessary stress significantly.

Thank you.
Thomas

#2

This may be an answer.

Choose Tools - Options. Go to Language Settings - Languages. Under Default languages for documents, select the document language for all newly created documents. If you mark For the current document only, your choice will only apply to the current document.

https://help.libreoffice.org/4.4/Common/Selecting_the_Document_Language

#3

Thank you, but I am afraid, that is not the answer.
The (Excel) file is the draft for the preparation of a questionnaire - to be translated into several languages (although the one I am currently working on has only 3 languages).
Means: I want certain columns ONLY to be set to German, while others next to it are set to English and Japanese.
Applying the language to the entire document does not do this trick.

Thomas

#4

I did a little test and was able to reproduce your problem with the Column

Format Cells > Font > Polish (which is just the test language I used). I

could reproduce the problem when working with the document as an .xlsx or
.xls file, but the problem does NOT exist when I used a .ods file. So the
issue seems to be specific to LibreOffice operating with Excel files. You
might want to report it as a bug:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugReport

#5

Sorry, but you are assuming that this is a problem with LibreOffice's ability to save in a Microsoft Excel format, and that the fault is therefore LibreOffice's. But do we know that it is possible to save a spreadsheet document in Excel format with different columns marked as being in different languages? That's the same question, effectively, as "Can you set different languages for different parts of a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel itself?" I don't know that you can. If not, the deficiency is with Microsoft's formats, and the bug report should probably go to them instead.

Brian Barker

#6

Apparently it is possible,since the OP originally stated:

"The original file is so formatted that there are font settings for
English and Japanese.
When I work at home (right now) I select the relevant columns and
change the language setting to German."

For that to be the case, the original file must encode the language for
individual columns.

#7

Hi, I have been using English and Japanese both in msexcel and LO calc for
many years.
I receive an excel file and then make a duplicate. When I want to send a
draft, I save it as an excel file and send it to the editor.
I sometimes have problems when special characters are used.

   I use the the input method frameworks fcitx and ibus. It allows me to
flip between languages in any document.
Libreoffice Version: 6.4.6.2 on Linux mint 20.0
and Language settings > languages>Default language for documents> Western
-Default: English. Asian: Japanese

Hope this helps.

#8

I think not. The questioner can change the language setting *in LibreOffice* for part of the spreadsheet document, because LibreOffice provides this facility. When you are editing a document file, you get the facilities the application provides, notwithstanding whether these can be saved in any chosen format - even the existing one. If the questioner then saves his work in .ods format (as he apparently now is doing), all would be well. But if he saves it back into an Excel format, the change gets lost, even when the document is reopened in LibreOffice. Yes: that could be a deficiency of LibreOffice's ability to save into Excel formats, but may instead be a deficiency in the Excel format itself. I have not been able to rule out the latter.

The test, of course, is if someone can find instructions for doing this *in Microsoft Excel itself* or can find or produce a document file in Excel format which shows different language settings.

Brian Barker

#9

I think you are at cross--purposes here. Yes, the questioner can enter English and Japanese text into different parts of a spreadsheet document; indeed, that is how the Excel-formatted documents arrive with him. He needs to add German, and I'm sure he can do this - umlauts and eszetts and all. So the fonts are OK. But what he would like is to keep the *language* settings for English and German applied to different columns - presumably so that the German text doesn't get marked as English misspellings! That works in LibreOffice, but gets lost when resaved into an Excel format.

Brian Barker