How to set up default language as English

[LilyLe_MAN]

Dear experts,

We use Power BI to create and share dashboard among colleagues over 100 countries. We use English as the language in our Power BI Desktop, then upload the reports on Power BI Report Server. We experience that the language of all visuals is automaticaly switched, based on the location users open it. For example, our colleague in Greece see the visuals in Greek, the ones in Hongkong see them in Chinese. We do not want to automatically switch to local languages. We would like to maintain English as default language for all countries.

I am writing to ask if this problem can be solved by setting the users' computer time, windows language as English. Or can we set up default language on our Power BI Report Server as English? 

Many thanks for your clarifications!

With best regards,

Lily

[TimoRiikonen]

Each user can override default settings for himself: Power BI server settings General -- > Language -- > <choose your locale> See: https://app.powerbi.com/groups/me/settings/general?redirectedFromSignup=1

Let's assume that your company has set the default browser language in Germany as German.
Then an employee who wants to use English instead, needs to either change the default language in his browser or this Power BI user setting.

[Anonymous]

@TimoRiikonen  is it possible for the admin user of power bi in a company to override default language in power bi server for all employees or do they have to do this themselves?

[TimoRiikonen]

Centralized locale overriding is not supported by Power BI.

If you need it, you could vote for this change idea: https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/36090391-force-locale-through-pbi...

Meanwhile your options to manage this centrally are:

1. Changing the default language on all or one of the browsers
2. Perhaps it is possible to build Javascript that does this to all user: if their settings is the default "Browser language", then the Javascript will go to change their setting to locale "xx-YY". You should also give error if anyone tries to change the setting manually back to "Browser language" as this will be converted back. 
3. Perhaps you might be able to set this by "hacking" the system with SQL commands, so you do similar overriding once a day to all users in the backend with a SQL command. If you are using SQL command, then next step would be to import all users from Windows domain to SQL server, so you make a good guess as to which country they are from. You can find information about this from https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/2580/querying-active-directory-data-from-sql-server/ . If you have more than 9901 accounts in your domains, search for example for my name from there to see how to handle that issue.

Please let us know if you develop some kind of solution for this.

[v-qiuyu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @LilyLe_MAN,

Based on my research, the issue should be caused by browser language settings. You can let the users change browser language to English then restart browser to view web portal again. 

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu 

[Adak]

Hi,

 We have the same problem, is there any way to force language settings in Power BI Report Server, so browser settings would not interfare?

Would be nice to solve this problem.