How do I make Arabic text right-to-left direction?

[adenovo]

My computer (Vista, Word 07) is in English.
In an English document, I'm putting in a few lines in Arabic.
How do I might them go from right-to-left?

Thanks!

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Adenovo,

If you have enabled one of the Arabic language choices for Office 2007
(in Word you can use
Office Files Button=>Word Options=>Popular=>Language settings )
there should then be a right to left button in the paragraph group of the on the Home tab in Word after you restart Word.

In the Windows control panel you may also need to implement the Arabic/Complex Script support for your PC if you see (Limited
Support) in the Office 2007 Languge settings dialog for 'Arabic'.

===========
My computer (Vista, Word 07) is in English.
In an English document, I'm putting in a few lines in Arabic.
How do I might them go from right-to-left?

Thanks!>>
--

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

 

[grammatim]

In XP, if you select the Arabic IME from the Status Bar, it gives you
properly ligated Arabic using whatever the system's Arabic font may be
(and then you can select the text and change it to whichever better-
looking Arabic font you prefer; you can also set your default font in
the "Complex Scripts" part of the Format | Font panel). It doesn't
seem like the sort of thing that would have changed much in Vista.

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi grammatim,

In Windows XP the Arabic IME wouldn't be installed as a default in English language Windows XP which in Office's language settings
tool would usually be indicated by the '(limited support)' marking on languages listed in the Office language tool, and that would
need to be installed as an additional Windows component then made available on the language bar through the Regional and Language
settings.

In Vista it seems that sopme language capabilities are more 'auto installed'.

For Word, the availability of the right to left icon in Word doesn't much care if the language support is actually installed in
Windows, only that a 'right-to-left' language/complex script has been set to be included by the Office language tool.

================
In XP, if you select the Arabic IME from the Status Bar, it gives you
properly ligated Arabic using whatever the system's Arabic font may be
(and then you can select the text and change it to whichever better-
looking Arabic font you prefer; you can also set your default font in
the "Complex Scripts" part of the Format | Font panel). It doesn't
seem like the sort of thing that would have changed much in Vista. >>
--

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

 

[grammatim]

But if the Arabic IME isn't installed (it's not difficult if it isn't
in out-of-the-box Vista -- I even made a salesman find the language
capabilities when Vista first came out, and the interface looks
identical to the XP Pro interface), the contextual ligatured forms of
the letters won't happen. Fonts existed pre-Unicode (and pre-Arabic
IMEs) for typing Arabic, where you typed backward and chose from up to
four variants of each letter (I did all the Arabic and Syriac sections
of *The World's Writing Systems* that way, in FrameMaker for Mac, of
course), but AFAIK no such fonts are available any more, because
Windows comes with support for just about all the relevant scripts.

 

[aaled1]

I HAVE A SIMPLE ANSWER FOR YOU, to get arabic into Microsoft word from Right to Left.

Go to Wordpad (Start button, 'Accessories' menu, WordPad).

Then, paste any Arabic text from the web into it (definitely works for Arabic from Google Translate).

It should come out from right to left.

Then copy and paste this into Word and it should keep this order.

I don't know why this works for me, and its much simpler than any installations of any kind (I haven't installed or done anything...)