Hi, does anyone know if the brand new Microsoft Word for iPad works with right-to-left languages, such as Hebrew and Arabic? Thanks

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Hi, does anyone know if the brand new Microsoft Word for iPad works with right-to-left languages, such as Hebrew and Arabic? Thanks

Hi, just got the Microsoft Word app on my iPad mini, great app in my opinion- just would like to know if anyone has a way to switch into right to left orientation just like Pages now has.

So far the only way I could get this to work was by emailing myself a Hebrew document, erasing it all, and writing the new document in its place, which actually really worked, with true formatting and all. Thing is, I wouldn't sign myself up for 10 bucks a month for a half-baked workaround which Pages does perfectly. Otherwise, Word is awesome.

Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks.

iPad mini (Retina) Wi-Fi, iOS 7.1

Posted on Mar 30, 2014 4:11 PM

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Answer 1

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Tom Gewecke

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Mar 30, 2014 5:12 PM in response to muzheh

No, it can't do rtl scripts except when working on a win word doc as you describe.

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muzheh Author

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Mar 30, 2014 5:18 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thank you. Looks like I'll be sticking to Pages for now. But you know what, that's really not a loss, especially considering that you can export to Word anyway from Pages, albeit with loss of formatting.

Just curious, it seems as if the RTL capabilities are there somewhat being as there is that workaround, just that it's not an accessible option in the menu as it is on PC. Does that make sense? And if it is, I wonder if that means that the iPad Word is a port of the Windows Word with some formqtting options disabled. Just wondering.

In any case, thank you for your help.

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

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115,970 points

Mar 30, 2014 9:19 PM in response to muzheh

muzheh wrote:

I wonder if that means that the iPad Word is a port of the Windows Word with some formqtting options disabled. Just wondering.

I think iPad Word is closer to Mac Word than Win Word. Mac Word, for 13 years now, has been unable to create connected Arabic text, except on a Win Word doc with some Arabic already there. I've never seen an explanation for this, but suspect it has something to do with Windows ability to embed fonts in such docs. In any case, this work around still has enough bugs that I don't think it has ever been widely used.

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