About differences between right-to-left and left-to-right worksheets

Microsoft Office Excel 2003

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About differences between right-to-left and left-to-right worksheets

Some specific differences you will notice in a right-to-left worksheet compared to a left-to-right worksheet are:

Visual differences

  • Cell A1 appears in the upper-right corner of the worksheet. Column letters progress from A on the right to IV on the left.
  • Row numbers appear on the right side of the document window, and the vertical scroll bar appears on the left side.
  • The fill handle appears in the lower-left corner of the cell.
  • Cell comment indicators appear in the upper-left corner of the cell.
  • In Outline view, outline buttons and document symbols appear at the right side of the worksheet.
  • The horizontal split box appears at the left side of the spreadsheet, above the vertical scroll bar. The vertical split box appears next to the right horizontal scroll arrow.

Functional differences

  • Ranges are referred to by the name of the cell in the upper-right corner of the range and the name of cell in the lower-left corner, separated by a hyphen.
  • The AutoSum tool looks up and to the right for cells to total.
  • AutoFormat formats the worksheet so that row headings in a selected range appear on the right side of a table, and totals appear at the bottom and left sides of the selected range.
  • You can enter button labels, text box entries, and cell comments by using right-to-left, left-to-right, or bidirectional text.