About global text direction

The feature described in this Help topic is only available if support for right-to-left languages are enabled through Microsoft Office Language Settings. To enable right-to-left features, you must be running a Microsoft Windows operating system that has right-to-left support.

Global text direction defines the starting alignment, reading order, and keyboard language in edit fields. However, you can change these properties by using key combinations or buttons on the Formatting toolbar. Changing the paragraph direction in any edit field affects that field only; no other edit field in the item is affected.

Global text direction also affects:

Reading order of text displayed in the columns of all of its Table views.
Laying out plain text information in an item's body or content area. Plain text does not carry a paragraph direction property in it. Therefore, a message received from a plain text e-mail program, or item heading information pasted in the body of the item when replying to or forwarding it, will have a layout that depends on the global text direction.