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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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
    2024-03-11T01:57:47+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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  2. Anonymous
    2024-04-01T02:28:16+00:00

    There is a workaround for this problem: change your language settings to English (UK) instead of English (US).

    That fixed the problem for me on:

    • Macbook Pro (M3, 2023)
    • MacOs Sonoma 14.4.1
    • MS 365 Subscription
    • MS Powerpoint Version 16.83 (24031120)

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-07-10T09:28:19+00:00

    It wasn't working for me on Sonoma 14.1

    Then I've tried to force the application language (using Italian) and now I have centimetres instead of inches. yay

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-07-10T09:36:35+00:00

    Thanks, but unfortunately not a solution if you want to use English (US) with centimeters (my use case, I am German, but I create documents in English, and I am used to all menus and formulae in Excel in English).

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