Microsoft Office 2000 provides right-to-left functionality and features designed to support languages that work in a right-to-left or bidirectional environment for text entering, editing, and display.
This topic provides reference information about:
Cursor movement and text selection
Selecting Arabic ligatures and diacritics
In order to enable the right-to-left features in Microsoft Office 2000, you must be running a 32-bit Microsoft Windows operating system that has right-to-left support ・for example, the Arabic version of Microsoft Windows 95. Learn about requirements for right-to-left languages.
Note Not all of the programs in Office 2000 support each right-to-left function or feature described in this topic. For specific procedures, see Help for the program you are using.
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The language that appears in menus, dialog boxes, and wizards is referred to as the user interface language.
Several right-to-left features in Office 2000 programs use the active user interface language to determine the screen layout direction and the alignment of text within dialog boxes.
The following examples show Arabic and English user interface languages.
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The Microsoft Windows operating system uses an indicator on the taskbar to display the current keyboard language. The indicator for Arabic is 
, and the indicator for Hebrew is 
. Learn about adding a language or keyboard layout or learn how to switch keyboard layouts.
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When right-to-left and left-to-right text are used together in the same sentence, paragraph, or control, the combined text is referred to as bidirectional, or mixed. Direction is a general term that describes the reading order, alignment, and overall layout of screen elements.
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The appearance of the insertion point varies to indicate whether the run is left to right 
or right to left 
. Cursor movement and text selection is logical or visual.
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Text in a cell or field can be left aligned, center aligned, or right aligned. In some programs, such as Microsoft Access, text can also have General alignment.
When text has General alignment, text and numbers are aligned according to the keyboard language of the first character entered ・for example, text in the cell or field will be right aligned if the first character is in a right-to-left language, and left aligned if the first character is in a left-to-right language. You can override General alignment and switch to either Left, Center, or Right alignment for individual objects.
Many bidirectional programs apply context rules that govern the reading order of text and how the text is aligned according to the type of control it's in. Controls such as text boxes and combo boxes can support either plain text or rich text editing mode.
The following are the context rules for the reading order and alignment of text:
Any time you change the first strong character from a left-to-right language to a right-to-left language, and vice versa, the reading order and the alignment change accordingly.
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In word-processing programs ・such as Microsoft Word 2000 ・you can select, find, and replace individual diacritical marks (Arabic and Hebrew) and individual Arabic characters regardless of whether they are ligated. Each ligature and diacritic is managed as a discrete unit of a right-to-left language word. How to select diacritics and ligated characters.
The following example shows an Arabic word with a three-character ligature as each character is selected.
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In Arabic, numerals are available in two forms: Arabic and Hindi.
Arabic numerals Numerals used in North America, Europe, and in some Arabic countries (1, 2, 3, 4, and so on).
Hindi numerals Numerals used in several Arabic countries 
.
Note You can change the current numeral display in right-to-left programs by using the settings on the Right To Left tab of the Options command (Tools menu) or by clicking the Regional Settings icon in Control Panel.
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Hijri dates are supported in Office 2000 programs enabled with right-to-left features. (In Control Panel, double-click the Regional Settings icon, and then click the Date tab to see what date format the Microsoft Windows operating system is using.) In several programs, you can modify date fields between Hijri and Gregorian calendars. For example, in Microsoft Outlook you can display date information in either calendar or, in some items, both calendars.
Tip You can adjust the Hijri calendar by using the settings on the Date tab of the Regional Settings icon in Control Panel in Microsoft Windows 98 or later, and Microsoft Windows NT Workstation version 4.0 or Windows 2000 Professional. The Hebrew calendar, the predominant calendar used in Israel among Hebrew speakers, is fully supported in Word and Microsoft PowerPoint.
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In Office 2000, you can save files in HTML format for posting on the Web in right-to-left or left-to-right direction. Web pages with right-to-left direction are marked with the standard HTML DIR attribute in the HTML file. If the Web browser you are using recognizes the DIR attribute, the page will be displayed with right-to-left direction. If the DIR attribute is not recognized, the page will be displayed with left-to-right direction.
Tip To view right-to-left Web pages, use a browser that recognizes the DIR attribute, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.02 Middle East or above, Internet Explorer 4.01 for Complex Scripts, or Internet Explorer 5.0 or later.
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Office 2000 programs support the following code pages available to Arabic, Hebrew, and mixed-text users:
| Arabic | Hebrew |
|---|---|
| UTF-8 | UTF-8 |
| ISO 8859-6 | ISO 8859-8 |
| DOS-720 | DOS-862 |
| ASMO-708 |
Tip The Character Map add-in provides a view of the numerous codes supported by Office 2000 programs. You can easily select a character from one of the right-to-left or left-to-right language font pages, copy it to the Clipboard, and then insert the character in your document. You can open Character Map from Programs\Accessories. If Character Map is not installed on your computer, you can install it by double-clicking the Add/Remove Programs icon in Control Panel, and then clicking the Window Setup tab.
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Learn about creating forms and dialog boxes with bidirectional extensions in Help for Visual Basic for Applications.