Even though a workbook has a certain direction, you can display its individual worksheets in either a right-to-left or left-to-right view.
Unlike workbooks, in which the change is not apparent until a new workbook is created, worksheets display the direction change immediately.
When you switch worksheet directions, Microsoft Excel with right-to-left features simply reorients the data from left-to-right or right-to-left. All underlying formulas and values remain intact. Cells with the General alignment attribute will left align left-to-right text and right align right-to-left text, regardless of worksheet direction.
Right-to-left data in worksheets
- General is the default alignment, regardless of worksheet direction.
- When entering right-to-left text in a worksheet, characters will appear from the right side of the Formula bar and move to the left.
- In addition to entering right-to-left, left-to-right, or bidirectional text in a cell, you can also change the reading order and alignment of cell text.
Any version of Microsoft Excel with right-to-left support is designed to display and print both right-to-left and left-to-right text. To do this, the program should use a font that contains both right-to-left and left-to-right language characters. Most fonts available with bidirectional Microsoft Windows operating systems contain both right-to-left and left-to-right characters. If you choose a font that does not contain both right-to-left and left-to-right characters, existing text in one or both languages may be displayed incorrectly using the default secondary font, Tahoma. To correct this problem, choose a different font.
Checking the spelling of bidirectional text
You can check the spelling of both your English and right-to-left text in cells. Simply choose a dictionary whose language corresponds to the text used.
- You must install a version of Microsoft Excel that includes a right-to-left language dictionary so that you will be able to check spelling of right-to-left text.
- When checking text with a right-to-left language dictionary, English words are ignored and not flagged as misspelled. Similarly, when checking text with an English dictionary, right-to-left language words are ignored and not flagged as misspelled.
- To change dictionaries, select the dictionaries you want on the Spelling tab of the Options dialog box (Tools menu).
Right-to-left features on Web pages
Right-to-left features on Web pages are set according to a two-level hierarchy: page level and control level.
Page level
A Web page that's published from Microsoft Excel will have the same display direction, either left-to-right or right-to-left, as the corresponding Excel worksheet it was created from. That direction appears as a setting of the Dir property of the Web page.
Notes
- Web page direction is included in the underlying HTML code of the Web page through the use of the standard HTML Direction (DIR) attribute. For example, the code <HTML DIR=RTL>, placed at the beginning of the <HTML> element, identifies a right-to-left Web page.
- Controls that are placed on a Web page inherit the directionality of the Web page itself, depending on whether the control has right-to-left features. Controls without right-to-left features appear in a left-to-right direction.
Control level
Controls with right-to-left features initially appear on a Web page according to the direction of the Web page. After you place a control on a Web page, you may be able to change the control display direction to give it right-to-left appearance and functionality. The property name that controls the display direction varies with the control type. The properties in the following table control directionality for Web page controls.
| Control type | Description |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Office Web Component controls | The Office Web Component controls are the spreadsheet, the chart, and the PivotTable list.
For the spreadsheet and PivotTable list, set or change in a design program, such as Microsoft FrontPage or Microsoft Access data access page Design view, by using the Advanced section of the property toolbox for the control. No setting is available for the chart. The direction setting property is RightToLeft. Note Office Web Component controls each have a property toolbox that can be used both while designing the control and working with it in the browser; however, the right-to-left setting can't be changed in the browser. |
| Intrinsic browser controls | Examples of intrinsic browser controls include Table, Label, TextBox, ComboBox, ListBox, OptionGroup, and ScrollingText.
Set or change the direction by using an HTML editor, such as the Microsoft Script Editor, that exposes control properties in a properties window. The direction setting property is typically Dir. |
| ActiveX controls | These are other controls that are available with Microsoft Office programs or Microsoft Visual Basic .NET.
Set or change the direction by using an HTML editor, such as the Microsoft Access data access page Design view or the Microsoft Script Editor, to add controls and expose control properties in a properties window. The direction setting property is typically RightToLeft. |
Import and export right-to-left worksheets in text formats
Microsoft Excel stores all characters as Unicode code page values in logical text layout, but can import and export worksheets saved as text files if these files contain right-to-left text stored in the appropriate Windows code page and logical text layout. For example, a text file containing Arabic text must be stored in the Arabic Windows code page 1256 to be successfully imported by Excel.
To create text files that are recognized by Excel, use ConvText, a stand-alone text-file conversion utility included with Excel. ConvText provides both logical and visual text layout options and an extensive list of supported bidirectional code pages to create a new file in a recognizable text format. Subsequently, you can choose Windows (ANSI) as the file origin setting in the Text Import Wizard when importing an appropriately formatted text file.
Note A worksheet in Lotus or Quattro Pro format that requires code page or text layout conversion, or both, can still be imported into Excel by saving the worksheet in text file format prior to importing it. The ability to save a worksheet in text file format is a standard feature of most database or spreadsheet products. ConvText can then be used to create a recognizable text file. When Excel imports the text file, data from the original worksheet will be fully recreated in a new Excel worksheet.
Right-to-left sort order will be applied wherever possible. This applies to data lists in table view, card view, and icon view, and to group-by lists, contact lists, folder lists, and address lists.
Note Some server-side views might not sort data according to right-to-left sort order because they follow supported server-side sort orders.