Tamil is a Dravidian language that is used by approximately 215 million people in India and other parts of South East Asia. It is one of the official languages of Sri Lanka, is read horizontally from left to right, and is written as non-Latin, Brahmic-derived script. It is also one of the 37 languages fully supported by Microsoft Office. Because of this, you can easily configure your version of Microsoft Windows so that you can quickly create Tamil documents in Microsoft Word.
Step 1
Determine whether the Tamil language pack is already installed on your computer. To do this, select Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Office Tools > Language Settings. If Tamil is available in the Available Languages listing, enable it. If it is not enabled, download and install a language pack from Microsoft. (See the resource section at the end of this article for a link.)
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Step 2
Enable the keyboard layout for Tamil. To do this, first click the Start menu in the lower left corner of the desktop. Select Control Panel. In the Control Panel, select either the "Regional," "Clock, Regional, and Language" or the "Regional and Language" options. (The option available depends on the version of Windows you are using). Vista and Windows 7 users should click the "Change Keyboards" button under the Keyboards and Language tab, which will make the "Text Services and Input Languages" window appear. XP users can click the "Details" button on the Languages tab, which will make the "Text Services and Input Languages" window appear.
Step 3
Select Tamil from the list for the default input language in the "Text Services and Input Languages" window. If you don't see Tamil, click "Add" to view the "Add Input Languages" dialog box, then select Tamil from the list. Once you have made these changes, click apply and close the window all of the language-related windows.
Step 4
Change the keyboard language type. In the task bar, near the bottom of your windows desktop (not in MS Word), you will see a two-letter code that indicates the current keyboard language next to a small icon of a keyboard. Click it and select "TA" for Tamil.
Step 5
Open a blank document in Microsoft Word and begin typing. The font will have automatically changed to Latha (which contains the Tamil character-set) and the Tamil script will appear in the document as you type. When finished save the document.
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