Language of the recipients Sharing Email from SharePoint or OneDrive

Brass Contributor

Hello,

 

i have not found anything and tried many things and I'm 100% sure that I'm not alone with this problem

 

If you share a file to an external person then this person gets a nice sharing email. 

 

Is their somewhere an option to define the language of that sharing email.

 

Somewhere on the web I have found, that it has something to do with the Microsoft Account language setting? Mine is in englisch but my sharing emails are still in German. 

 

Many Greetings for any help

Erik 

 

 

 

3 Replies

Unfortunately there is not a way to set the language used when sharing a file from ODFB or SPO. The language is not only based on the language used by your used but also the default language initially configured for the user. Have you also tried to define the language for the user as English in the SPO user profiles? 

Hello Juan Carlos

thanks for your reply !

Hmmm ... I have tried that also in the SharePoint Admin Center under "Manage User Profiles" and changed my profiles settings to English (United States) for both (My Display Language and My Content Search Languages)

But it is still the same. The sharing emails are in German. On ODFB if go to Gear Icon -> Language Settings it says: The default language for this site is in German tough it says this in English.

Any other hints. On some forum entries some people have solved this with My User Profiles but for us it is not working.

Their must be some documentation or clarification from Microsoft regarding this issue. I doubt that I'm the only one. ;)

But many thx for the reply


@ErikVet I just re-tested.  For this particular message, the email will be sent in the "My Display Language" of the user that is sharing as long as it matches one of the languages supported by the OneDrive personal site.  OneDrive supports 50 languages. the number that it supports depends on the age of the account, the rules have changed a couple of times during the past 5 years.

Go to your OneDrive site.  Replace the "onedrive.aspx" with "muisetng.aspx", then "Show advanced settings".  It will tell you the "default language" for the OneDrive site and any other supported languages.  Tenants that are less than 3 years old will typically have all languages checked, older ones will have none or very few.  Select the languages that you want, then change your "My Display Language"

Remember that the "My Display Language" takes a long time to take effect, so wait 10-15 minutes after a language change before you share on either OneDrive or SharePoint.  It should be obvious, all your menus will change language.  The email will go out in the language of your current UI on that site.

Some system-generated email does go out in the current language of the user as long as it matches one of the languages supported by the site.  Some is in the default language of the site, which can't be changed.  Some others are created by timer processes which run under the tenant admin account, and will reflect that language.  It used to be worse, and fewer things could be changed.  At one point over 5 years ago it depended on the country in the profile of the person who created the tenant.