How to Launch It

• Open the traditional Control Panel through the Start Screen or using the Run Windows command “control”.
• Select “Category” view for Control Panel.
• Select “Clock, Language and Region” category. This opens a new page containing the subcategories.
• Select “Region”. The applet will launch as a 3-tabbed window.

The functions of this applet are divided in 3 tabs.

•   Formats
•   Location
•   Administrative

Formats Tab

This tab lets you specify a language, the formats of which will be used throughout the system. Also, you can customize individual formats of time, date, currency and numbers. It is generally recommended to keep the format language same as the languages used by Windows to display GUI text. This keeps the display consistent. Nonetheless, you can choose a language of your own. For example, if you prefer to use English language, but want to work with the currency format of your native language, then you can specify your native language here. This will show the normal display element in English language, but all types of date, time, currency and number formats will be shown in your native language. Besides the general format settings, you can customize all types of date, time, currency and number formats extensively

• Date Formats – Short date, long date
• Time formats – Short time, long time
• Number formats – decimal symbol, number of digits after decimal, digit grouping style and symbol, negative sign symbol, negative number format, positive number format, measurement system, etc.
• Currency formats – currency symbol, positive currency format, negative currency format, decimal symbol, number of digits after decimal for currency, digit grouping for currency values, etc.

Each of the above formats can be specified individually, thus letting you open to extensive customization.

Location Tab

Here, you can specify your region so that Windows and other software can tailor their content based on your region.

Administrative Tab

This tab contains settings that also affect the components of the system not related to your user account. These settings are typically handled by an administrator. Suppose that you have customized the regional settings of your account.

• Now, you want them to reflect everywhere – Windows’ welcome screen (where no user account settings apply) and system accounts.
• You are also pretty sure that these settings are valid for all future new user accounts of the system. So you wish to preset all future user accounts to match your regional settings.

The above customizations can be accomplished in this tab. [caption id="attachment_21094" align="alignnone" width="640"] Figure 1 Copy your regional settings to Windows’ welcome screen, all system accounts and all future new user accounts[/caption] There might be several applications that don’t support Unicode characters – the collection of character of most of the languages. These applications might not be able to display the characters of your default language. For these applications, you can specify a separate locale so that they might render correctly. The Administrative tab lets you specify this locale for non-Unicode applications. [caption id="attachment_21095" align="alignnone" width="640"] Figure 2 Set locale for non-Unicode applications[/caption]  ]]>