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The Microsoft Office 2010 ScreenTip Language

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A Lesson by The Professor

The Microsoft Office 2010 ‘ScreenTip Language’ Feature

Hello class, good to see you again.

Today I would like to talk to you about a new feature in Microsoft Office 2010called ScreenTip Language.

The ScreenTip Language will help you navigate different language versions of Office. I expect multilingual users or IT Helpdesk support engineers will really love this! The ScreenTip Language will translate the text of display elements – such as buttons, menus and dialogs – into another language by just pointing to them with your mouse.

For example: Observe the below image, an English user, on a Japanese version of Office, can use the ScreenTip Language to help them navigate as follows. See how when the user points to the “Table of Contents” – even though the menu is in Japanese – the ScreenTip shows the description in English!

  

Watch a video (1 minute):

I’ve arranged a brief video for you to learn more about this exciting new feature

 

You can customize or add languages through Language Preferences or download any language from the Office website. To begin using the ScreenTip Language:

1. Click on the Office button:

2. Choose Options and click on the Language tab:

3. Go to ‘Choose ScreenTip Language’ section near the bottom and select your language:

 

4. Click OK to save your settings and close the dialog.  

 

Now - when you hover over items in the user interface - the screentip will show the information in the language you selected!!

Remember class, only Japanese and English are available in the Technical Preview. More languages will be coming!

 

Well done! You have now enabled the ScreenTip Language feature! If you wish to switch back to the same language as the UI - then follow the same steps and select Match Display Language.

I hope you found this lesson useful. If you have any questions, I’m always available – just leave a note below and I will respond as soon as I can.

The Professor

PS. I would like to offer my thanks to Colin Fitzpatrick for his invaluable contribution on this article. Colin is a Program Manager at Microsoft in the Office Ireland Development Team and he is based in Dublin, Ireland! Colin and his team are a big part of bringing this wonderful feature to you!

 

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, email addresses, logos, people and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, or event is intended or should be inferred.