Preparing to Create Localized SharePoint Solutions

  • Article

Applies to: SharePoint Foundation 2010

The topic explains some of the things that you must do to prepare your development environment to create localized SharePoint solutions.

Installing Language Packs

To correctly test your localized SharePoint solutions, you must install language packs for each of the languages in which you want to provide localized versions of the solutions.

To download language packs

  1. Navigate to one of the following Microsoft Download Center pages, depending on whether your development environment is Microsoft SharePoint Foundation or Microsoft SharePoint Server:

    Tip

    Open two browser windows or tabs to the download page, because the page you interact with will change to the foreign language. Hence, you need a second window that stays in your language so you can read the instructions.

  2. In the Choose Language drop-down list, select the foreign language.

  3. Click Change. This changes the page to the foreign language.

  4. Click the foreign equivalent of the Download button.

  5. When prompted, save the file to a local storage location on a front-end web server of your development SharePoint farm.

    Tip

    If you will be downloading more than one language pack, download each one to a separate folder because they all have the same file name.

  6. Repeat the procedure for every foreign language you need.

To install a language pack

  1. Double-click the SharePointLanguagePack.exe to start the Setup. The installation program is in the foreign language.

  2. The first screen asks you to accept the license. Select the check box in the lower-left corner, and then click the button on the lower-right. The progress screen appears, which is automatically followed by the final screen.

  3. The final screen asks if you want to run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard automatically when the installation finishes. The check box to do this is selected by default. If you have more than one front-end web server, you should not run the wizard at this time, so clear the check box. Click the button in the lower–right corner.

  4. Repeat the previous steps on every front-end web server, and run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizardonly when the installation is complete on the last server. After a language pack is installed on all front-end web servers, the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard must be run to complete the installation. You can start it from Central Administration or have it run automatically after the language pack is installed on the last server. It will run in the original language of the SharePoint farm installation.

  5. Make no changes on any page of the wizard. Click Finish on the last page.

  6. Repeat this procedure for every foreign language pack that you downloaded in the previous procedure.

Creating Test Site Collections

To test the localized versions of your solutions, you must create site collections in the foreign languages.

To create a foreign language site collection

  1. In the Application Management section of the Central Administration application, open Create site collections.

  2. Make choices on the Create Site Collection page just as you would when you are creating a site collection in the main language of the farm, except that there is now a Select a Language drop-down list in the Template Selection area. Select the foreign language.

  3. Click OK when you are finished with the page.

Tips and Notes

After one or more language packs are installed, a Select Language drop-down list appears in the top center of the Create page in SharePoint where new websites, lists, and pages are created.

Tip

You may find that you need to switch between sites or site collections of different languages frequently during development. Consider executing an IIS reset when switching to a site with a different language. Or, if you are working with a sandboxed solution, consider restarting the User Code Host service before switching. In both cases, this forces the closing of your solution's application domain within the w3wp.exe worker process (or in the case of a sandboxed solution, within the SPUCWorkerProcess.exe process). Thus, when you run the solution in a site of the new language, the static variables, such as localized strings, are reloaded with the new language as the context language.

See Also

Concepts

SharePoint Foundation Development Tools

Localization of Farm Solutions in SharePoint 2010

Other Resources

Localization of Sandboxed Solutions in SharePoint 2010