Set Language and Time Zone for OWA in Exchange 2013 and 2016

Todd NelsonSystems Engineer
CERTIFIED EXPERT
Published:
Set OWA language and time zone in Exchange for individuals, all users or per database.
If you’ve ever had a need to globally set language and time zone settings for users that access mailboxes via Outlook Web App (OWA), or gotten tired of manually setting these values when logging into OWA for the first time, we will help you with configure these options from the Exchange Management Shell (EMS).
 
In order to configure these settings, we need to know that we will use Set-MailboxRegionalConfiguration command in Exchange and understand the parameters involved.  Those parameters are…
 
  • DateFormat
  • TimeFormat
  • Language
  • TimeZone
 
The biggest challenge, as I see it, is to make sure a valid format is set for each parameter.
 
DateFormat
For the English (US) language set, valid formats for the ‘DateFormat’ parameter are…
 
  • M/d/yyyy (default)
  • M/d/yy
  • MM/dd/yy
  • MM/dd/yyyy
  • yy/MM/dd
  • yyyy-MM-dd
  • dd-MMM-yy
 
TimeFormat
For the English (US) language set, valid formats for the ‘TimeFormat’ parameter are…
 
  • h:mm tt (default)
  • hh:mm tt
  • H:mm
  • HH:mm
 
Language
For the ‘Language’ parameter, ‘en-US‘ is the value needed to set the language for “English (United States)” regions.  However, if another language needs to be set, it is not so easy to find all of the available formats.  This site, though not specifically for Exchange, helps to take the guessing out of setting a proper language value.  Refer to the “Language Culture Name” column.
 
TimeZone
Lastly, the proper syntax is also not so readily available for the ‘TimeZone’ parameter.  From a PowerShell console, use this command to list all available time zones to use with the ‘TimeZone’ parameter… 
 
Get-ChildItem "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones" | ft PSChildName

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Valid time zone formats for the 50 United States are…
 
  • ‘Alaskan Standard Time’ … Alaska
  • ‘Central Standard Time’ … Central Time (US & Canada)
  • ‘Eastern Standard Time’ … Eastern Time (US & Canada)
  • ‘Hawaiian Standard Time’ … Hawaii
  • ‘Mountain Standard Time’ … Mountain Time (US & Canada)
  • ‘Pacific Standard Time’ … Pacific Time (US & Canada)
  • ‘US Eastern Standard Time’ … Indiana (East)
  • ‘US Mountain Standard Time’ … Arizona
 
Now that we have the “basics” (as it were), we can proceed with configuring language and time zone settings for those that access OWA.  This first command sets the required parameters for an individual mailbox user…
 
Set-MailboxRegionalConfiguration -Identity <USER_NAME> -TimeZone '<Pacific Standard Time>' 
                      -DateFormat 'M/d/yyyy' -Language '<EN-US>' -TimeFormat 'h:mm tt'

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The next command, sets the time zone and language settings for all mailboxes in your organization…
 
Get-Mailbox | Set-MailboxRegionalConfiguration -TimeZone '<Pacific Standard Time>' 
                      -DateFormat 'M/d/yyyy' -Language '<EN-US>' -TimeFormat 'h:mm tt'

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Perhaps we need to be a bit more broad but targeted with a specific mailbox database.  The following command will set the required parameters for all mailboxes in a database…
 
Get-MailboxDatabase -Identity '<DATABASE_NAME>' | Get-Mailbox | Set-MailboxRegionalConfiguration 
                      -TimeZone '<Pacific Standard Time>' -DateFormat 'M/d/yyyy' -Language '<EN-US>' 
                      -TimeFormat 'h:mm tt'

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Setting these values for Exchange aren’t required but it does help with the overall configuration of the environment and making sure that the proper values can be set for your organization.
 
Lastly, these same commands and parameter formats should be able to be used on an Office 365 tenant.
 
Good luck and have fun!
 
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Todd NelsonSystems Engineer
CERTIFIED EXPERT

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