Word 2003 spontaneously changes language on specific text   

Working with a large document (> 400 pages) written by many authors over 
several years. Broke file into pieces and am now putting those pieces back 
together again in a new file.

Track changes is enabled. For reasons that elude me, the language selection 
for specific text (sometimes paragraphs, sometimes words/phrases, sometimes 
table cells) spontaneously changes from English to another language (e.g., 
German) or from another language (e.g., French or German) back to English. It 
doesn't happen on everything, only on the same specific text again (and again 
and again).

One place this is happening is at the start of the document which has the 
word "Contents", a blank line, then the TOC. The formatting codes at the 
start of the file start with the Contents line and cover about 15 of the 
first 30 lines in the 3 level TOC. This happens without updating the TOC, 
adding/deleting anything on the referenced pages, etc.

I've tried clearing formatting and then reselecting my styles, but that 
doesn't stop this behavior.

Thanks for your help.

date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:27:01 -0800   author:   CAP

Re: Word 2003 spontaneously changes language on specific text   

Did you select the entire document (Ctrl-A) and Set Language to, say,
US English? (Tools > Language > Set Language)

Maybe some of the pieces were written by authors in other countries
with different default language settings.

Maybe that really annoying "Detect language automatically?" thing is
turned on.

On Nov 12, 2:27 pm, CAP  wrote:
> Working with a large document (> 400 pages) written by many authors over
> several years. Broke file into pieces and am now putting those pieces back
> together again in a new file.
>
> Track changes is enabled. For reasons that elude me, the language selection
> for specific text (sometimes paragraphs, sometimes words/phrases, sometimes
> table cells) spontaneously changes from English to another language (e.g.> German) or from another language (e.g., French or German) back to English. It
> doesn't happen on everything, only on the same specific text again (and again
> and again).
>
> One place this is happening is at the start of the document which has the
> word "Contents", a blank line, then the TOC. The formatting codes at the
> start of the file start with the Contents line and cover about 15 of the
> first 30 lines in the 3 level TOC. This happens without updating the TOC,
> adding/deleting anything on the referenced pages, etc.
>
> I've tried clearing formatting and then reselecting my styles, but that
> doesn't stop this behavior.
>
> Thanks for your help.

date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:07:54 -0800 (PST)   author:   grammatim

Re: Word 2003 spontaneously changes language on specific text   

Grammatim,

Thanks for responding.

I have selected the entire document and set the language to US English. 
Then, I changed specific things to other languages. "Detect language 
automatically" is enabled and the strange updates appeared to stop when I 
purposely disabled that (it is hard to tell for sure since my doc is so 
large).

What is driving me crazy is that some of the things which I have 
intentionally set to German, French or Spanish spontaneously change back to 
English and some things that I have intentionally (and repeatedly) set to 
English are changing (generally, to French). The TOC part of that is really 
annoying.

Thanks, CAP

"grammatim" wrote:

> Did you select the entire document (Ctrl-A) and Set Language to, say,
> US English? (Tools > Language > Set Language)
> 
> Maybe some of the pieces were written by authors in other countries
> with different default language settings.
> 
> Maybe that really annoying "Detect language automatically?" thing is
> turned on.
> 
> On Nov 12, 2:27 pm, CAP  wrote:
> > Working with a large document (> 400 pages) written by many authors over
> > several years. Broke file into pieces and am now putting those pieces back
> > together again in a new file.
> >
> > Track changes is enabled. For reasons that elude me, the language selection
> > for specific text (sometimes paragraphs, sometimes words/phrases, sometimes
> > table cells) spontaneously changes from English to another language (e.g.,
> > German) or from another language (e.g., French or German) back to English.. It
> > doesn't happen on everything, only on the same specific text again (and again
> > and again).
> >
> > One place this is happening is at the start of the document which has the
> > word "Contents", a blank line, then the TOC. The formatting codes at the
> > start of the file start with the Contents line and cover about 15 of the
> > first 30 lines in the 3 level TOC. This happens without updating the TOC,
> > adding/deleting anything on the referenced pages, etc.
> >
> > I've tried clearing formatting and then reselecting my styles, but that
> > doesn't stop this behavior.
> >
> > Thanks for your help.
> 
>

date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:40:01 -0800   author:   CAP