Converting existing text to right-to-left (Arabic)

[iiccss]

Hello.

This refers to MS Word 2003 (Office Small Business ed.) I embedded some
Arabic text into an English document by using insert symbol. (Yes, it was
very very painful.) It looked great. Then I saved the file and exited. When I
reopened the file, the Arabic letters had been reordered left-to-right, and
the text was therefore gibberish. This has never happened to me before. The
only thing I can think of is that the document was .RTF rather than .DOC . I
hate to loose all that work. Any way I can highlight the appropriate portions
of the file and magically reorder them right-to-left? (I tried to highlight
and set language to Arabic. Didn't work.)

 

[iiccss]

Sorry. I should have noted that this is on an XP machine.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Is there a reason you can't install the Arabic IME? (You'd need the
original Windows XP disk(s), but the various IME's do come with.) Then
Word will be able to recognize the existing Arabic as r-to-l text.
(And next time, you'll be able to type your text considerably more
easily, and all the combining forms take care of themselves).

 

[iiccss]

No reason, I could do this for the future. For this time, however, I am
trying to deal with the order inversion in this particular file. I just wrote
a sentence in a .DOC file, saved it, exited, and reopened it, and it was
still in the correct order. So it seems this is an .RTF issue. Does letter
order disappear in .RTF? If so, should I conclude that the order with which I
entered the letters is irrevocably lost?

Thanks,

i.c.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

I've never used RTF. What happens if you save the document as .doc?

 

[iiccss]

Right-to-left order is preserved when I save the file as .DOC .

Unfortunately, I received this particular file as .RTF and after entering
the Arabic text, I just saved it without paying attention. As a result, it
was saved as .RTF and apparently the right-to-left order evaporated...

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

So when you save the RTF document as a .doc, it's ok?

 

[iiccss]

I'm afraid not. It's only if I start with a DOC and save it as a DOC that
it's OK. It seems that the RTF step loses order information.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Anyway, if you install the Arabic IME, it'll be a lot easier to retype
the Arabic.

But it's just possible that if you install it, Word will be able to
read the .rtf properly.