Bug in Arabic Word makes comments backward in English Word

Hi,

 

Let us try changing the paragraph alignment to ‘Left to right’ and then verify the results. To do that, under the Home tab in the Paragraph section click on Align Left.

 

I hope this fixes the issue. If you still have issues, you may reply and we’ll be happy to help you.

 

Thank you

I said in my original post that right and left aligning will not fix the problem.

It's literally an issue of the cursor functioning like Arabic MS Word (it will move right-to-left, not left to right). If I pause too long, it will begin typing things at the other end of the line and the sentences will become jumbled.

If you originate a document in an Arabic version of Word (which is what my students are using) but type it in English, when you open that word document on an English MS Word, you will have this same trouble when writing comments.

Here is another example. Again, sometimes it does this and sometimes it "allows" me to type words in the right order.

This is: "You should not make opinionated comments like this."

Without warning, it started typing it all backwards!

This only happens when I am making comments on a Word document that originated from an Arabic speaking student.

Please note the following: there's a difference between paragraph direction and text alignment. You're trying to change the text alignment to the left, but this won't solve the problem. The solution is to make the paragraph left-to-right (LTR), but unfortunately you don't have this option because your Word doesn't support Arabic. Those who have Arabic-enabled Word can choose RTL paragraph direction in order to type Arabic, and LTR paragraph direction to type English.

Here's a workaround for your situation (based on Word 2010):

Click File > Options.
When the Word Options window opens, go to Quick Access Toolbar.
Under Choose commands from, choose All Commands.
Scroll down to Left-to-Right Text Direction, double click it to add it to the column to the right.
Click OK.

You'll notice that the Quick Access Toolbar has now a new button.

Now, when you insert a comment that turns to be RTL, click that button and it will make your comment LTR.

For some reason, this does not always fix the problem, and lately, although I have added the Left-to-Right button, it does not help whether I turn it on or off, and my comments are still backwards.

Any idea why this is happening?

I was able to reproduce the issue only when I removed all traces of Arabic in the settings of my Windows 7 and Office 2010. Obviously Word retains a lot of its special language features in its documents. Based on that, I can suggest the following workaround:

You need to add another button to your Quick Access Toolbar. Follow the steps mentioned in my previous post to add a button called "Ltr Run". A new green circle will appear in your Quick Access Toolbar. Now, when you add a comment to a document created with Arabic Word:

a. Use the old LTR Text Direction button to make your comment start from the left.

b. While the pointer is inside the comment, press CTRL+A to select all. Then click the new Ltr Run button. This way Word will know that the text should run now LTR in the comment, not RTL as the way it was when the document was created.

You can use method b. to fix any previous backward comments.

Those who have Arabic support added to Office don't encounter this problem. If the problem persists, try to add Arabic to your Office languages (File > Options > Language). Keep English as the default. You don't have to add any Arabic keyboard or to have Arabic menus. The LTR Text Direction button will be enough (you'll have it then in the home tab close to a RTL Text Direction button).

So if I install Arabic support on my machine, it will fix the problem?

Will I run the risk of creating this problem for another user on another machine?

For example, if I create a document and then mail it to a colleague or put that document on a department drive, will a person opening it have problems with it becoming backwards?

If Arabic support will remove the problem, I would rather install that so that I don't have to think about this anymore!

-Bill

You don't have to worry about it as long as you set English as the default language. Comments would still start from the left and run LTR. Other LTR features would remain the same. You'll only see, in your Office applications, new options related to Arabic in some commands.

You will still need the LTR Text Direction button (that is going to appear with a RTL Text Direction button in the Home tab) when adding comments to documents created with Arabic Word.

I have the same problem, but it's exacerbated by the fact that I use Office for Mac 2011, so that some of the Windows-based workarounds don't seem to be applicable.

My solution is similar to billsenglish's original solution, but perhaps a little more flexible: I've found that pasting the original Word text into an OpenOffice file preserves nearly all the Word formatting and gets rid of the unwanted Arabic text direction.

Of course, for members of this community, that might not be a preferred solution, particularly since the temptation is then to carry on using the OpenOffice application and ditching Word :=)

I don't know if the following method works on Mac, but I think that it works on Windows, although I don't know how practical it is in every situation:

Create a Word template from your English-only Office, give it to your Arab students and ask them to use it for their papers (creating documents by double-clicking on that template).