Microsoft, shame on you. You’re throwing away our data with only the thinnest, shabbiest pretense at warning us.
It turns out that you’ll delete all of your Outlook QuickParts (and possibly other customizations) when you change language settings in PowerPoint (and possibly in Word/Excel and the others … they share the same dangerous dialog box).
Change the default language and your data is deleted. It’s not restored when you switch back to your original language. I said “deleted” and meant it. It’s dead, Jim. Gone.
So if you need to change the default language in any Office app, be sure to back up %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Templates\NormalEmail.dotm first. That’s where Outlook stores the QuickParts data and that’s what you’ll need to restore it after Microsoft deletes it for you.
The specific dialog box that does the damage is at Review | Language | Language Settings.
When you choose a different language and click Set as Default, you get a vague warning that some of your customizations might be deleted, fonts and oh gosh, maybe some other stuff.
Nuh-uh. Click OK and all your QuickParts are gone. Forever.
If you depend on QuickParts in Outlook at all, you might want to finish this sentence, then go back up that file.
