I have an MS Word 2016 document. I can do CTRL+A to select all, and in the Review ribbon -> Language group, choose Language -> Set Proofing Language and "Mark selected text as" English. "Detect language automatically" is turned off.
Then, I can copy English text from any other program – it could be a browser on an English page (e.g. copying the instructions on this page) or Wordpad or even a browser's own chrometext when all its settings are English, and when I paste it in, it's marked as German.
I've never used this computer for German correspondence and never set interface languages to German. I've only opened about a half dozen distinct Word documents since installation, and none of them were in German. In Language Preferences, English is the default. Why is pasted text marked German? More importantly, how can I stop that from happening, other than CTRL+A and selecting the language from the Language tool on the Review tab after every paste?
I recognize that language is part of text formatting.
It's kind of the opposite problem of having non-English text marked as English, which could be blamed on the Web marking most language as English by default.
Best Answer
Somehow, the language got changed in the style that text was being pasted into. Solution:
The red lines underneath text marked as the wrong language may persist, but triggering the start of a spelling / grammar check with F7 should clear that.
If the issue persists, check the styles in the Normal template for new documents.