Office 2013 Bible: The Comprehensive Tutorial Resource

Appendix C

International Support and Accessibility Features

IN THIS APPENDIX

Working with text encoding in Word

Enabling additional editing languages in Microsoft Office

Using translation and accessibility features

Today’s global economy requires the ability to use documents with a variety of settings and also in different languages. You can be prepared for a wider variety of business situations if you know how to work with encoding, language, and accessibility features that affect Office.

Understanding and Choosing Text Encoding in Word

Behind the scenes, applications identify each character (letter, number, punctuation, or symbol) that you type as a numeric code. Each language uses its own encoding system, so character 232 in one language encoding system looks drastically different from character 232 in another language encoding system. The Unicode encoding system encompasses the characters in the most common language encoding systems in use. That means that as long as a document is saved with Unicode encoding, the default in Word, chances are you’ll be able to open and view it.

If you have instances when Word documents open as funny, unreadable garbage characters, the document may be using an encoding scheme that Word doesn’t recognize by default. In such a case, you can set up Word to prompt you to confirm encoding when you open a file. To do so:

1. With an unreadable file open in Word, choose File ⇒ Options.

2. Click Advanced in the list at the left.

3. Scroll down and, under ...