Proofing tools for Office 2010

To get back to the original question, I can confirm that it is still not possible to purchase Microsoft Proofing Tools for Office 2010 in the UK - however much one is willing to pay - and even though we were supposed to' take heart' that Microsoft were working on this problem in April!! 

It's available on the US website - but not to UK residents as you have to enter a US address.  It's ridiculous that Microsoft has made the 2010 edition unavailable in the UK and one can only surmise that it's  a way of forcing customers to opt for Windows 8 and Office 2013.  In fact that's what one Microsoft on-line chat advisor suggested I do.

This is really a terrible way to treat customers.

No one is forcing you to buy Microsoft Office. You can use Open Office or LibreOffice instead. Development is costly. Perhaps you feel that Microsoft should pay its employees third-world salaries in order to price its products at third-world prices?

Office 2010 proofing tools also could be downloaded and installed separately from language packs, without charge, for any single language (not just for “exotic” ones). I know as I downloaded one of them directly from Microsoft's site just a few months ago.

Now it seems there is no way to download proofing tools for Office 2010, as I am searching the web for an hour to access the download page of Office 2010, but could not find anything. It has gone for 2010. Probably Microsoft is “forcing” its 2010 customers to migrate to 2013. A kind way of forcing, isn’t it. As many people here say: Thank you Microsoft...

And Suzanne, no offense but I need to interfere your comment about software prices and salaries of developers:

Companies use the least costly ways to produce their products. I comment as a senior software developer; software development is not an exception. Large scale development companies use many software developers who reside in the 3^rd^ world or who came from the 3^rd^ world. And guess what? They pay lower salaries to these people. Wages for 3^rd^ world, prices for 1^st^ world!

And according to your angle of view, most of the people at the 3rd world cannot buy licensed software as they do not have the money which the developed world requests from them. So they should use free products, yes? No. This is not a fair angle of view. For your information, even Microsoft is making discounts on select products (like Office) at 3^rd^ world countries in order to compensate income differences.

For anyone in the UK trying to find the Language Pack for Office 2010:

After days of searching on the internet, trying to buy from Microsoft in the US (and failing) and many wasted hours of on-line chat with Microsoft assistants, we have finally managed to download the Arabic language pack for Office 2010.  It's not possible to download it directly oneself - you need the help of a Microsoft Technical Support assistant - and not all of the assistants seem aware of how to do it, so be persistent until you find someone who does. 

We initially found the Language Pack on the Microsoft site in Ireland and and when our attempted purchase failed we rang the technical help number shown on the screen.  I was told you can also ring the UK technical support number.  We gave our credit card details and the advisor e-mailed us a security code which we had to read back to him.  We then logged in to our Microsoft Account and the Pack was waiting for us to download. The price is 19.99 euros and your bank will convert the amount.  Hope that helps others in the UK who have had trouble finding the Language Packs.

Don't thankhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/2460053

Oh, and it's free!

This KB describes a Service Pack for the Office 2010 Proofing Tools, not the tools themselves.