MS Office for Mac doesn't use system settings for measurements

Anonymous
2023-11-30T02:59:43+00:00

I am using MS Office for Mac, and recently, all measurements in PowerPoint, Word, etc have suddenly changed to inches instead of centimeters.

I checked the system settings through System Settings > General > Language & Region > Measurement system, which is set to Metric. Changing it to US and then back to Metric did not re-trigger MS Office to use the correct measurement system and it continues to show in inches.

Can someone help? I would like to show all measurements in MS Office in centimeters like I had before.

For context, I am using:

  • MacBook Air (M1, 2020)
  • macOS Sonama 14.1.1 (23B81)
  • MS 365 subscription
  • MS PowerPoint/Word/Excel for Mac, version 16.79.2 (23112723)
Microsoft 365 and Office | PowerPoint | For home | MacOS

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Answer accepted by question author
John Korchok 236.6K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2023-11-30T16:31:52+00:00

This is a bug that only affects some measurements, like paragraph formatting. To let Microsoft know about the issue, choose Help>Feedback>I don't like something. Describe the problem, being specific about which dialogs display the issue, so they can reproduce the problem. Submitting sends the report to the Mac programming team. They are unlikely to reply.

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-03-10T16:20:17+00:00

    I have the same problem, looks like Powerpoint uses units as defined by the langage setting, not the measurement setting from MAC system settings. So I'm now using "English (Australia)" as macOS primary langage (as Australia is using the metric system, unlike US or UK). This allows maintaining English as the OS langage, and restore metric units in Powerpoint.

    Not sure who's to blame for these ugly dependencies,, Microsoft or Apple. At least this looks like a decent workaround, unless differences between these English flavors create issues elsewhere.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-03-11T01:57:47+00:00

    Hi Jim, please see the message thread below.

    We have determined this is indeed a bug on the Microsoft side: MS Office uses the primary language to determine measurement and not the region settings (where you can choose metric, US, etc).

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-03-11T01:55:31+00:00

    Thanks for the tip Franck.

    I always used Singapore as Region (which controls the number format, measurement system, etc) but kept primary language to English US (for spelling). Now I have changed the primary language to English (Singapore) and the measurements in MS Office are using cm again.

    So this has actually determined the root cause and the fact that this is indeed a bug in Microsoft. They use the language to determine measurement, not the region settings (where you can choose metric, US, etc).

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-03-11T01:57:25+00:00

    Hi Mia, please see the message thread below.

    We have determined this is indeed a bug on the Microsoft side: MS Office uses the primary language to determine measurement and not the region settings (where you can choose metric, US, etc).

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    3 people found this answer helpful.
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