Unknown language after reset password in the email

Updating answer for ease of access and reference:

You are experiencing password reset emails appearing in an unknown language (not English) only in your production environment, while the same emails display correctly in dev and staging. The email title shows text like "Nullstilling af Okta-adgangskode af administrator" (Danish), suggesting the system is pulling a language setting from somewhere unexpected.

Root Cause: Okta determines the language for password reset emails based on the locale attribute set on each user's Okta profile. If users in production have a locale value set (such as da_DK for Danish) that differs from your dev/staging users, the emails will be sent in that language instead of English.

Solution: Follow these steps to diagnose and resolve the issue:

1. Check user locale attributes in production. In the Admin Console, navigate to Directory → People and select an affected user. Review their profile to see if the locale attribute is set to a non-English value (for example, da_DK, fr_FR, de_DE). Compare this to a user in dev or staging who receives English emails.
2. Verify the email template language settings. Go to Customizations → Emails and check which password reset email template is configured. Confirm that the template you expect to use is actually assigned and that no alternative language templates are overriding it.
3. Check for bulk user imports or migrations. If users were bulk-imported or migrated to production from another system, their locale attributes may have been set during that process. Review any recent user provisioning or sync operations that may have populated the locale field with non-English values.
4. Update user locale attributes if needed. If the locale values are incorrect, you can update them in bulk via the Okta API or through a CSV import. Set the locale to en_US (or your preferred English locale) for affected users. See the Okta Users API documentation for details on updating the locale attribute programmatically.
5. Verify display language settings do not conflict. While the user's Display Language (set in their personal Okta dashboard settings) takes priority for the Okta UI itself, password reset emails are localized based on the locale attribute. Ensure there is no conflicting configuration at the org level.
6. Test with a production user. After making changes, create a test user in production with an explicit en_US locale and trigger a password reset to confirm the email appears in English.

Why it only happens in production: Your dev and staging environments likely have users with en_US or no locale set, whereas production users may have been provisioned with locale values matching their geographic region or organization settings.

Sources:

• Okta Community: How does Okta know what language email to send? — https://support.okta.com/help/s/question/0D54z00007gfpyVCAQ
• Okta Community: Set the language of the user based on his country — https://support.okta.com/help/s/question/0D54z00007Mmw5BCAR
• Okta Users API documentation — https://developer.okta.com/docs/api/resources/users

We recommend verifying the locale attribute values on your production users and contacting Okta Support if the issue persists after confirming locale settings are correct, as there may be an account-specific configuration or data issue that requires investigation.

Regards.

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