Several languages such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu or Hebrew are usually written from right to left. Today we will learn how to shift the writing direction in Office 2016/2019/365 from the default Left To Right (LTR) into Right To Left direction (RTL). For convenience, we are providing detailed instructions for Word and Outlook; however process is similar for other Office apps such as Excel and PowerPoint.
Word right to left writing
In Customize Ribbon:
- Open your word document, click on File and select Options.
- In the customize ribbon, click on the drop down box and select All commands.
- Then search for the Left to Right and Right to Left in the options.
- Press on New Group at the bottom and rename it as you need.
- Add both LTR and RTL in the created group and select OK to add it in the Ribbon.
In Quick Access Toolbar:
- Open your word document, click on File and select Options.
- In the Quick Access Toolbar, click on the drop down box and select All commands.
- Then search for Left to Right and Right to Left in the options.
- Click Add and select OK to add those options in Quick access toolbar.
Right to left switching with Macros
Readers asked me whether there is a way to programmatically set Right to Left for specific pages / ranges and paragraphs in a Word document.
The VBA method .RtlPara allows you to set the paragraph direction for a specific selection using Macros.
RTL in Outlook
In customize Ribbon:
- Open your Outlook 2016 and Click on New mail in the Home ribbon.
- Now in the opened compose mail dialog box, click on File and select Options.
- In the Customize Ribbon, click on the drop down box and select All commands.
- Search for Left to Right and Right to Left options.
- Press on New Group at the bottom and rename it as you need.
- Add both LTR and RTL in the created group and select OK to add it to the ribbon.
In Quick Access Toolbar:
- In your Outlook 2016, click on New mail in the Home ribbon.
- In the dialog box of compose mail, click on File and select Options.
- In the Quick Access Toolbar, click on the drop down box and select All commands.
- Search for Left to Right and Right to Left options.
- Click Add and select OK to add it in Quick Access Toolbar.
- Hit either LTR to write from Left to Right and RTL to write from Right to Left in both Quick Access Toolbar and Customize ribbon.