Is there a reason you can't install the Arabic IME? (You'd need the
original Windows XP disk(s), but the various IME's do come with.) Then
Word will be able to recognize the existing Arabic as r-to-l text.
(And next time, you'll be able to type your text considerably more
easily, and all the combining forms take care of themselves).

On Aug 6, 9:08*pm, iiccss wrote:
Sorry. I should have noted that this is on an XP machine.



"iiccss" wrote:
Hello.

This refers to MS Word 2003 (Office Small Business ed.) I embedded some
Arabic text into an English document by using insert symbol. (Yes, it was
very very painful.) It looked great. Then I saved the file and exited. When I
reopened the file, the Arabic letters had been reordered left-to-right, and
the text was therefore gibberish. This has never happened to me before. The
only thing I can think of is that the document was .RTF rather than .DOC . I
hate to loose all that work. Any way I can highlight the appropriate portions
of the file and magically reorder them right-to-left? (I tried to highlight
and set language to Arabic. Didn't work.)-