How do I change the language of all Powerpoint slides at once?

To change the language of the entire PowerPoint easily, open the View tab and select the Outline view.

Now press

  • Ctrl+A to select all.
  • ToolsLanguage → Choose your language to set.

Likewise while you have everything selected you can change other things like fonts, colours etc. Although of course in many case this is better done by changing the slide master, a presentation that has had many editors may have lots of 'hard' formatting set which deviates from the underlying master and needs resetting to be consistent. You can also reset individual slides to the master style, but this may result in placeholders moving as well, which may be undesirable in some situations.

PowerPoint 2013

  • ViewOutline → select all slides (in a left menu) via Ctrl+A.
  • ReviewLanguageSet Proofing Language... → Choose your language to set.

As for me - PowerPoint restart was needed. Probably because I also did changed Editing Language:

  • ReviewLanguageSet Proofing Language...Language PreferencesChoose Editing Languages.

Using Powerpoint 2010 I opened the Outline menu -

outline tab

Selected all text (Ctrl+A), opened the language menu and set my proofing language

language option

And it worked!

The language menu is located on the Review ribbon tab (after the Slide Show tab and not visible on the screenshot).


I improved upon Inigo's answer to provide a recursive version that changes all items to the desired language.

This version will recursively investigate each shape that is a group type. Some experimentation suggests that msoGroup and msoSmartArt are the group types - feel free to add to that list if you find other types of shapes that can hold text objects.

Sub ChangeProofingLanguageToEnglish()
    Dim j As Long, k As Long
    Dim languageID As MsoLanguageID

    'Set this to your preferred language
    languageID = msoLanguageIDEnglishUK

    For j = 1 To ActivePresentation.Slides.Count
        For k = 1 To ActivePresentation.Slides(j).Shapes.Count
            ChangeAllSubShapes ActivePresentation.Slides(j).Shapes(k), _
              languageID
        Next k
    Next j
End Sub


Sub ChangeAllSubShapes(targetShape As shape, languageID As MsoLanguageID)
    Dim i As Long

    If targetShape.HasTextFrame Then
        targetShape.TextFrame.TextRange.languageID = languageID
    End If

    Select Case targetShape.Type
        Case msoGroup, msoSmartArt
            For i = 1 To targetShape.GroupItems.Count
                ChangeAllSubShapes targetShape.GroupItems.Item(i), languageID
            Next i
    End Select
End Sub