Technical data

Setting Up and Editing the Project
6.4 Using Foreign-Language Character Sets
Programming with STEP 7
Manual, 05/2010, A5E02789666-01 161
Notes
If you change or copy projects or libraries that were created on a computer that is identified as
being language-neutral with respect to the Windows language setting but is not compatible with
the setting on the computer currently being used, data corruption may occur if characters that are
not contained in the English character set (ASCII characters 0x2a - 0x7f) were used in the project
or library.
For this reason, before editing "foreign" projects or libraries, make sure to check whether the
Windows language setting on your computer matches the project language.
If you export hardware configurations or symbol tables that are to be imported in another Windows
language setting, make sure that only characters from the English-language character set (ASCII
characters 0x2a - 0x7f) were previously used and that no other language-specific characters such
as German umlauts, Japanese characters or Cyrillic characters are present.
Exported hardware configurations or symbol tables that contain language-specific characters such
as German umlauts, Japanese characters or Cyrillic characters may only be imported in the same
Windows language setting from which they were exported. This means that if you import older
symbol tables that might contain such language-specific characters, be sure to check the results
carefully: the symbols must be unique, must not contain any question marks or other incorrect
characters, and must be plausible.
If symbol tables contain special characters that are not defined in ("known to") the current
Windows language setting, then the question marks or other incorrect characters now part of the
symbol names may cause problems and errors when sorting by names and comments.
Please note that with symbolic addressing the symbolic names must be written in quotation marks
("<Symbolic Name>").
Basic Procedure
To be able to enter text in foreign-language character sets in projects and libraries, proceed as
follows:
1. In the Windows Control Panel, set the language setting to the language desired.
2. Create a project.
3. Enter the text in foreign-language characters.
For project and libraries that were created before STEP 7 V5.3 SP2, the project language is "not
yet specified". In this case, you can select the Edit > Object Properties menu command to set the
project language to the language currently set in Windows. Before doing so, make sure that the
project does not contain any characters that are not defined in ("known to") the current Windows
language setting.