figured it out. use the windows 8 panel to somehow pin the IDL GUI application to the taskbar. find the icon for the program in the taskbar. right mouse click on IDL icon in taskbar > find the menu entry for IDL > right mouse click that > find "properties" > left mouse click that the target field should contain the path to the executable in quote marks: "C:\Program Files\Exelis\IDL82\bin\bin.x86_64\idlde.exe" to change the language, add the start options AFTER the quote marks such as here: "C:\Program Files\Exelis\IDL82\bin\bin.x86_64\idlde.exe" -nl en -nl tells the software to use another language en is the option for english