Re: Collin Jolly's non-functioning Thai/English switcher for Microsoft Office 97 (HelpDesk, 05-Apr-2000), here's a possible solution. It may not be the easiest solution, but it works when I try it.

What reader Collin needs to do is to make a small change to his Windows registry file using a program called REGEDIT.EXE (supplied with Windows). Before doing this though, I HIGHLY recommend making a backup of the registry first (just in case and all that jazz). There are many programs that can do this, but the one I used is called RegSnap (https://www.webdon.com/regsnap/index.html). I mention RegSnap because I used it to analyze the change to the registry after Thai and English are "switched". But it also has backup and restore capabilities.

After the registry file has been safely backed up, do the following:

• Click the Windows Start button (bottom left)
• Choose "Run" and type "Regedit" (without the quote marks hereon after)
• Double click "HKEY_USERS"
• Double click ".Default"
• Double click "Software"
• Double click "Microsoft"
• Double click "Office"
• Double click "8.0"
• Double click "Shortcut Bar"
• In the right window pane there should be a field called "ThaiUI" and "(4096)" should appear at the end of the line
• Double click on the "ThaiUI" field
• Change the value data from "1000" (that's 4096 in hexadecimal) to "0" (without the quotes please)
• Quit Regedit

The Office 97 applications should now be running with English menus. To change it back to Thai, change the "0" in the value data field back to "1000" (reader Collin probably doesn't want this though). This might be a good time to check whether the Thai/English switcher is working now (no reason why it should though, since we didn't do anything to fix IT).

A related tip on the "greyer" side of things:

Most programs add an entry to the registry when they're installed. In particular, demo/time-limited programs do this to insure that they stopping working when time runs out. Often, it's possible to eke a bit more out of such demo programs by taking a snapshot of the registry before installing said software and comparing the registry again after installation to see what changes were made. Or to restore the registry after D-Day. Unfortunately, this doesn't always work since the demo program may hide their "counter" elsewhere.