App-V: Adding Additional Languages to Office 2010 Packages (. . . and pre-setting the Outlook Default Language)

Here is the scenario: You have gone through the trouble of sequencing Office 2010 with either 4.6 or 5.0 and you have it working like a champ. You then get a call. “We need this also deployed for our users in <FILL_IN_THE_BLANK_NATION_THAT_REQUIRES A DOUBLE BYTE CHARACTER SET>. Did I mention we need it by the end of the week [It is Thursday, by the way.]

Don’t panic. Adding an additional language pack is a pretty straight forward process as long as the sequencing workstation is set up properly in advance. You will also have to do some additional tweaking to get yourself out of a “chicken/egg” scenario if you want the “Outlook Startup” to now be in a different localized language. Since we cannot open up Outlook to change the default input and display languages, this will need to be applied through registry imports.

Enabling OS Language Support on the Sequencer

First Add the OS Language Support on the Sequencer. This can be done easily using the “Region and Language” Control Panel in Windows 7

For more specific information on how to change/add languages in Windows 7, please refer to this link: https://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Add-or-change-an-input-language

 

With Windows 8 this is done in the “Language Control Panel.”

 

For more information on how to change/add languages in Windows 8, please refer here: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2607607

Office 2010 Language Files

Now you will need the supporting language files for Office 2010. This will require you have the files at the ready on or attached to the sequencer as well as the locale XML configuration file. You will then re-run setup with the /config switch pointing to the locale configuration file. For example, if you were applying the Japanese language support files to the existing office package you would only need the *.ja-jp directories and the ja-jp.xml file.

 

Custom Registrations

Outlook Display Language, Help Language, and Editing Language changes can either occur after the user has run Outlook in the default English (and makes the modifications post deployment) or before the fact. In this particular scenario, you already have a virtualized office package that was English-only. If you desire that the automatic startup language for existing and new Outlook profiles be already configured to default to another language for the display, help, and editing language, you will need to include some custom registrations in order to change the language. You will first need to know the decimal and hex equivalents of the LCID structure. You can look those up using the following reference:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc233968.aspx

For example, English is 0x409 in hex (1033 in decimal.) if you were wanting use Japanese instead, it would be 0x411 (or 1041 in decimal.)  You will then need to ensure that the following registry keys are set to that specific LCID during sequencing:

  • Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook
    Value: LastUILanguage
    Data Type: REG_DWORD
    Data (hex): <LCID Code in Hex>

  • Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Options\General
    Value: LastUILang
    Data Type: REG_DWORD
    Data (hex): <LCID Code in Hex>

  • Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\LanguageResources
    Value: UILanguage
    Data Type: REG_DWORD
    Data (hex): <LCID Code in Hex>

  • Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\LanguageResources
    HelpLanguage
    Data Type: REG_DWORD
    Data (hex): <LCID Code in Hex>

  • Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\LanguageResources
    InstallLanguage
    Data Type: REG_DWORD
    Data (hex): <LCID Code in Hex>

  • Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\LanguageResources
    OutlookChangeInstallLanguage
    Data Type: REG_SZ
    Data: Yes

  • Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\LanguageResources
    Value: FollowSystemUI
    Data Type: REG_SZ
    Data: Off

Procedure for Modifying Sequence

Whether you are using App-V 4.6 or 5.0, the process is the same. You will need to open the existing application virtualization package using the procedure to “Add new application."

This will invoke the monitoring phase. During monitoring, you will need to first run the command to add in the language files. For example, if you were to add support for the Japanese language files, you would type the following command:

setup.exe" /config ja-jp.xml

 

This would then install the native Japanese language files for office 2010.

Following that, you would need to add in the registrations. What I usually do is put all of them into a REG file and import them from the command prompt during sequencing. For example, if I were to import defaults for the Japanese language interface, I would import the reg file below:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

 

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook]

"LastUILanguage"=dword:00000411

 

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Options\General]

"LastUILang"=dword:00000411

 

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\LanguageResources]

"UISnapshot"=hex(7):31,00,30,00,33,00,33,00,3b,00,31,00,30,00,34,00,31,00,00,\

  00

"UIFallback"=hex(7):31,00,30,00,34,00,31,00,3b,00,30,00,3b,00,31,00,30,00,33,\

  00,33,00,00,00

"HelpFallback"=hex(7):31,00,30,00,34,00,31,00,3b,00,30,00,3b,00,31,00,30,00,33,\

  00,33,00,00,00

"UILanguage"=dword:00000411

"HelpLanguage"=dword:00000411

"InstallLanguage"=dword:00000411

"OutlookChangeInstallLanguage"="YES"

"FollowSystemUI"="Off"

 

Upon completion of these two procedures, I would then save the package and proceed to test.