How to Change the Language in Revit (and What It Changes for Your Team)

Most offices run Revit in the language their licence happened to install in, and nobody questions it until something collides. A German practice hires a coordinator who learned Revit in English and cannot find a single tool on the German ribbon. A UK firm picks up a project in Germany and the client’s BIM execution plan expects German-language families, templates and parameter names. A student works through an English course at home and a German install at university and loses ten minutes per session translating button labels in their head. Or an IT team installs a multilingual package and every new machine boots into a language half the office cannot read.

The fix is not a reinstall. Revit decides its interface language at launch, from a short code sitting on the shortcut that starts it. Change that code and the next launch comes up in the language you asked for, with that language’s templates, ribbon, Properties palette and Project Browser. Change it back and you are in English again. The whole operation takes under two minutes, and the recording below shows it end to end on Revit 2025.

What the recording cannot cover in two minutes is the part that matters on a live project: what actually changes when the language flips, what stays the same inside the model, and where a mixed-language team gets bitten by it. That is the rest of this guide.

What the language switch changes, and what it does not

Before touching anything it helps to be precise about what you are changing. Revit’s language setting is a property of the running application, not of the project file. The model you open is the same model whether the interface around it is English or German. Element names you typed, family names, view names, sheet names, shared parameter names and any text you authored are stored exactly as you entered them and are never translated.

What does change, and the recording shows each of these after the switch at 1:41, is everything Autodesk ships as interface text:

• The ribbon tabs, panels and tool names.
• The Properties palette labels for built-in parameters.
• The Project Browser headings and default organisation names.
• The default project templates offered on the New Project dialog. In the video the English templates listed before the switch are replaced by the German set after it.
• Dialog boxes, warnings, tooltips and the options bar.

So the switch is about the workspace, not the data. That distinction is exactly why it is safe to flip on a shared project, and also why it causes trouble in the handful of places where the interface text and the data overlap, which we get to further down.

Step 1: find the real shortcut, not just the tile

The setting lives on the shortcut that launches Revit.exe, so the first job is to get to that shortcut rather than the Start Menu tile that points at it. The recording starts at 0:11 by tapping the Windows key and searching for Revit, which brings up the Revit 2025 entry that most people launch from every day.

Right-click that entry and choose Open file location at 0:23. Windows opens an Explorer window at the folder holding the actual shortcut file. This is the step people skip, and it is the reason the trick “does not work” for them: the search result is a reference, and its Properties page does not always expose the target. The shortcut in the folder does.

One thing worth knowing that the video does not spell out: on a standard install this folder is the shared Start Menu programs folder, which is a protected location. That is why, a few steps later, Windows asks for an extra confirmation before saving the change. If your IT team has locked down that folder entirely, copy the shortcut to your desktop first and edit the copy instead. The copy carries the same target and the same language code.

Step 2: read the language code in the target

With the Explorer window open, right-click the Revit 2025 shortcut and choose Properties at 0:35. The Shortcut tab shows a Target field holding the path to Revit.exe followed by a language switch. At 0:40 the recording points at the end of that field, where the current code sits, in this case the English one.

The shape of the field is always the same:

"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit 2025\Revit.exe" /language ENU

The path in quotes is the executable. The /language switch followed by a three-letter code is the part you will edit. Everything else in that field should be left alone, and it is worth copying the whole value into Notepad before you touch it so you can paste it back if a keystroke goes astray. A shortcut with a broken target launches nothing, and an office full of people who cannot open Revit on a Monday morning is a poor outcome for a two-minute tweak.

Step 3: confirm the baseline before you change it

This is a small thing that good tutorials do and rushed ones skip. At 0:50 the recording launches Revit as it stands and walks through what English looks like: the New Project dialog lists the English templates, and once a project is open the ribbon icons, the Properties palette and the Project Browser are all in English. That check is at 0:56.

Do the same on your own machine. You are establishing a before state so that when you relaunch you can tell, in seconds, whether the switch took. It also reveals whether you are about to solve the right problem. If the templates you expect are missing in the current language, that is a content library gap, and changing the interface language will not put them back.

Step 4: swap the code, then approve the change

Close Revit first. The language is read at startup, so editing the shortcut while Revit is running does nothing until the next launch. At 1:12 the recording closes Revit, goes back to the shortcut, opens Properties again and moves to the end of the Target field.

The German code is DEU, and at 1:27 the existing code is deleted and DEU typed in its place, in capitals. Keep the space between /language and the code, keep the closing quote before the switch, and do not add anything after the code. The recording changes only those three letters and nothing else.

Click OK at 1:36, and when Windows asks for confirmation click Continue. That second prompt is the elevation dialog mentioned in step 1: you are editing a shortcut in a shared folder, so Windows wants an administrator’s approval. If you do not have local admin rights the change will be refused at this point, which is your cue to work on a desktop copy of the shortcut instead.

Step 5: relaunch and verify the whole workspace

At 1:41 the recording launches Revit again and the New Project dialog now lists the German templates. That is the first and fastest tell that the code was picked up. Open one of those templates and, at 1:48, the ribbon tools, the Properties palette and the Project Browser have all switched to German.

Do a slightly longer check than the video has time for. Open a recent project rather than a new template and look at three things: the Properties palette on a wall, the headings in the Project Browser, and a schedule you know well. The first two should be translated. The schedule’s column headers, if they are built-in parameters, will now read in the new language, while any shared parameters you added will read exactly as you named them. If everything lines up with that expectation, the switch worked cleanly.

The recording closes at 1:56 by suggesting you try the other supported languages the same way. It is worth doing once, just to see how much of Revit’s text is interface text: it is far more than most people assume.

The language codes (beyond the video)

The recording opens by showing the list of supported languages and their codes on screen. Those codes are Autodesk’s three-letter identifiers, and the ones you are most likely to need are below. Check the list shipped with your own release, because supported languages have been added over the years and the exact set depends on the version.

Language	Code
English	ENU
German	DEU
French	FRA
Italian	ITA
Spanish	ESP
Portuguese (Brazil)	PTB
Czech	CSY
Polish	PLK
Hungarian	HUN
Russian	RUS
Japanese	JPN
Chinese (Simplified)	CHS
Chinese (Traditional)	CHT
Korean	KOR

Two habits save trouble. Type the code in capitals, as the video does, so it reads unambiguously in a shortcut that several people may inspect. And if you are not sure which code your office standard expects, look at the Target of a colleague’s working shortcut before guessing.

The language pack must actually be installed (beyond the video)

This is the step the video does not need, because the machine in the recording already has German available, but it is the single most common reason the switch fails for other people. The /language code tells Revit which language resources to load. It does not install them. If you set DEU on a machine that only has English resources, Revit either falls back to English or complains, depending on the release, and the shortcut edit looks like it did nothing.

Language resources arrive in one of two ways. Newer installers let you pick additional languages at install time, and Autodesk Account offers language packs as separate downloads for a given version. Which you have depends on how IT deployed Revit. Before you roll a language change out to a team, check one machine, confirm the target language is present, and only then send the shortcut around. If you are the one building the deployment, install every language the office might need at the start. Adding one later means another round of installs on every workstation.

Why BIM Pros switch languages at all

Switching an interface you already know sounds like an odd thing to do deliberately. On real projects it happens for concrete reasons.

Project standards. A BIM execution plan, a client template or a national content library may assume a particular language. German templates ship with German view names, German line styles and German annotation families. If the deliverable must match the client’s standard, working in that language from day one avoids a translation pass at the end.

Mixed teams. A practice that hires internationally ends up with people who learned Revit in different languages. Letting each person run the interface they know, while the project itself stays language-neutral, is far cheaper than retraining anyone. One shortcut per person is all it takes.

Learning and support. Almost every tutorial, forum answer and course online is in English, including the Archgyan Revit courses. If you learned on a German install, switching to English while you study means the tool names on screen match the tool names in the lesson. Switch back for production work if your office standard is German.

Checking localised output. BIM managers who support offices in several countries sometimes flip language just to see what a colleague sees, for example to reproduce a problem with a schedule header or a dialog that only reads oddly in one language.

Where a language switch bites a team

The interface-versus-data distinction is clean in principle. In practice a few things live on the boundary, and this is where a mixed-language office needs a convention.

Built-in parameter names are display text. A wall’s Unconnected Height is the same parameter in every language, but its label follows the interface. That matters for anything that looks parameters up by their displayed name: view filters you author in one language and open in another still work, because Revit stores the parameter identity, but any documentation, checklist or screenshot you wrote for the team only matches one language.

Scripts that match on names. Dynamo graphs and pyRevit or Python tools that find a parameter by the string a user typed will break the moment someone runs them under a different interface language, because the string they are looking for no longer matches the displayed label for built-in parameters. Write tools against the parameter’s built-in identity or against shared parameters, which keep the name you gave them in every language. If your office relies on scripted automation, this is the first thing to test after a language change.

Export mappings. IFC property set definitions and other export mappings that reference localised parameter names will silently fail on an install running a different language. The problem is covered in detail in the guide on exporting Revit phases to IFC, where the German names for Phase Created and Phase Demolished are the example.

Templates and content paths. Each language has its own default template set and, often, its own content library folders. A team standard that says “use the office template” is unaffected, because you point at a specific file. A standard that says “use the default Architectural template” quietly changes meaning with the interface language.

Keyboard shortcuts. Default shortcuts are defined per language. Custom shortcuts you configured are stored in your user profile and normally survive the switch, but anyone who relies on the defaults will find some of them are different.

Schedules and tags for clients. Built-in column headers on a schedule follow the interface language of whoever last edited the heading. If you need a schedule in the client’s language, set the headings explicitly rather than relying on the default text, exactly as you would for any deliverable.

A team convention that avoids all of it

The cleanest setup is also the simplest. Do not edit the one shared shortcut in the Start Menu and leave everyone to discover the change. Instead:

1. Create one shortcut per language the office uses, each with the right /language code in its Target, and name them plainly: “Revit 2025 (English)”, “Revit 2025 (Deutsch)”. Pin them to the taskbar or drop them in the shared deployment so every machine has the same set.
2. Pick an office default and write it into the BIM standard next to the template and content library paths. Most problems above come from an unstated assumption about which language people are in.
3. Author office templates and families so they do not depend on the interface language. That means shared parameters with deliberate names, explicit schedule headings, named view templates and filters, and never relying on Autodesk’s default template set.
4. Test scripts under every language you support before they go into the office toolbar. One run of each tool on a shortcut with the other code is enough to catch name matching.
5. Document the switch in onboarding. New starters who know Revit in another language lose days quietly translating labels. A one-line instruction pointing them at the right shortcut removes that entirely.

Common mistakes

• Editing the search result instead of the shortcut file. Always use Open file location first, as the video does, and edit the shortcut in the folder.
• Forgetting to close Revit. The code is read at launch. If Revit is open when you edit, the change appears to do nothing until you restart it.
• Typing the wrong code or the wrong case. Use the three-letter Autodesk code, in capitals, with a single space after /language and nothing after the code.
• Breaking the rest of the Target field. Deleting a quote or part of the path means Revit will not launch at all. Copy the field to Notepad before editing.
• Setting a language that is not installed. The switch only selects between installed language resources. Install the pack, then set the code.
• Lacking admin rights for the shared shortcut. The Continue prompt needs administrator approval. Without it, edit a desktop copy of the shortcut instead.
• Assuming the model changed. It did not. If a colleague says the project “is now in German”, their interface is in German; the data is untouched, and their shortcut is what needs attention.

Next steps

Make the switch once on your own machine, following the recording, and check the three places the video checks: New Project templates, the ribbon, and the Properties palette with the Project Browser. Then decide, as a team, which language is the office default and create the matching named shortcuts rather than leaving it to whatever the installer chose.

If you are learning Revit and your install is not in English, setting an English shortcut for study sessions is the single easiest way to follow along with any course, because every tool name on screen will match the one being taught. The Archgyan Revit courses are built around the workflows firms actually run, from families and templates through to coordination, and they are all taught in English.