Change Those Pesky Regional Settings When You Travel Internationally This Summer [OS X Tips]

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Regional Settings

If there’s one thing you can be certain of, it’s that date formats, measurement units and currency will generally be different when you travel to a different country. If you’re living in a new country, or working there, chances are this will be even more important to change on your computer, so as to make your written communication that much more comprehensible to your friends and co-workers in your new country. Mac OS X makes it easy stay in sync with the region you are visiting with just a few preference adjustments.

Simply open up System Preferences from the Dock or from the Apple Menu. Once launched, click on the “Language & Text” preference icon, which should bring up the corresponding preference pane. Click on the “Formats” tab to make your regional changes.

The first thing you can change is the Region itself. Choosing United Kingdom, for example, will make changes to the format of the Dates, Times, and Numbers sections of the preference pane, using the formats from the UK. Notice that dates are now “5 January 2012” and the currency is set to British Pound Sterling. Measurement units are set to the (much more logical and easy to calculate with) Metric system. Fun!

If you want even finer grained control, click on the Customize button in any of the three areas, and you’ll be able to tweak the defaults to your heart’s content. In addition, drag the language you’d like to set as the auto-correct priority to the top of the list of languages in the Language tab.

You’ll be able to switch settings as you go to and fro, hither and yon, gallivanting about the globe this summer time, or any time you need to.

Got an OS X tip? Need help troubleshooting OS X? Drop me a line or leave a comment below.

Via: OS X Daily

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