Office-js-docs-pr: Can we use wildcards in manifests?

[glr0221]

Hello Microsoft,

A good day to you all.

Currently, referring to this documentation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/develop/localization, there seems to be no way to use wildcards for manifests. Or am i mistaken?

Just to give an example, outlook (OWA) supports over 100++ english locales(codes). And assuming our addin's manifest default locale is not english, then this means i have to provide override values to all 100+ english locales in my manifest to support all english locale codes. Correct? This of course makes the manifest file, lengthy and kinda difficult to debug/verify honestly.

So point being, is there any way where we can use wildcards? where override can be "en-*" to cover all english locales? Or may I request that feature from your good office? This would most likely, also fix issues if your team decided to add new locales in the future.

My suggestion is. the following :

      <Override Locale="en-au" Value="My AU AddIn"/>
      <Override Locale="en-US" Value="My US AddIn"/>
      <Override Locale="en-gb" Value="My GB AddIn"/>
      <Override Locale="en-*" Value="My Super AddIn"/>

So in the above case, it will still lookup if the current locale matches an "exact" value, and if it doesn't it will use the "en=*" partial match value.

I hope that makes sense. Thank you.

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Document Details

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• ID: 80b2525b-823a-7d51-f4b6-6bc7803a3217
• Version Independent ID: 744ec80b-eadd-2819-c8d4-e8d77169c522
• Content: Localization for Office Add-ins - Office Add-ins
• Content Source: docs/develop/localization.md
• Product: non-product-specific
• Technology: add-ins
• GitHub Login: @o365devx
• Microsoft Alias: o365devx

[glr0221]

@Rick-Kirkham sorry to mention you on this ticket but is there any way to do this right now? If none, is there any possibility we can mark this as a feature request for MS developers? thank you very much, we really appreciate it.

[glr0221]

Hi everyone, so today, I experimented a bit and found out that using 2 character (language only) locale-code will actually act like a wildcard in overrides.

So for example, if i wanted to support all spanish regardless of where they are then all i do in the override is as follows :
<Override Locale="es" Value="My Spanish AddIn" />

For french :
<Override Locale="fr" Value="My French AddIn" />

And if i want an override for French-Canada, but still support all other french regions :

<Override Locale="fr-CA" Value="My French Canadian AddIn" />
<Override Locale="fr" Value="My French AddIn" />

I would like to confirm if the above usage is officially supported by the backend? If so, can you point me out to the right documentation that states this? Or could we update the documentation to reflect this way of declaring overrides in manifests?

Note : The use of 2character (language-only) locale was brought about by my findings that Outlook Android, uses 2-character locale.

[glr0221]

@erayc-msft @smaremanda no update on this? thank you

[glr0221]

anyone comments? @erayc-msft @smaremanda

[AlexJerabek]

@glr0221, I'll ping some people internally and try to get you a response.

[glr0221]

thank you @AlexJerabek .. really appreciated.

[AlexJerabek]

Hi @glr0221,

Here's the answer from our product team:

Wildcards are not supported. The alternative is using just the language, but is not supported across all endpoints.

Please create a request for this feature on UserVoice. There, we can prioritize new feature requests based on community demand.

I'm going to close the issue now, as there's nothing actionable we can do in the docs. Feel free to create a new issue in the https://github.com/OfficeDev/office-js repo if the manifest is not properly honoring localization overrides.

[glr0221]

Thank you @AlexJerabek. Sorry for the late reply.