RTL support for Office for mac - Non existent after five years

Guys:

I appreciate your frustration, trust me.

Your MVPs have asked for this feature constantly for the past ten years or so.  We asked several times for this release.  Local Microsoft offices in right-to-left countries continue to press the point.

Sorry: they cannot yet make the business case to spend the money.

Of course, you can get RTL support in Office online versions: https://office.live.com/start/default.aspx

We will continue to ask: but until the business case shows a profit, right-to-left will remain on the "wish list".

Regards

Please don't shoot the messenger. The ones you need to get your hands around their neck are the bean counters at Microsoft.  Rather than consider spend on keeping and getting new customers regardless of Platform. They compartmentalize according to platform which is wrong headed.  I am quite sure if John had any Power to do so, he would have gotten support for RTL years put in years ago.

Mac Users have always had rough treatment Microsoft (and Adobe). Starting out with Bill Gates efforts in the Early days to put Apple out of business. Its getting better. But the 20 year progression has been slow and agonizing to say the least. Life would be so much easier for Mac Users if MicroSoft and Adobe would take some more reasonable attitudes towards Mac like the rest of the software world does.

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Disclaimer:

The questions, discussion, opinions, replies & answers I create, are solely mine and mine alone, and do not reflect upon my position as a Community Moderator.

To be honest, Apple Pages latest updates are taking the application to new levels in terms of productivity and features. Thus, making it less of a "joke".

I'm heavy word-processing user. I work with heavily-customized content and need to tweak lots settings to get the content to show the way it should. Apple Pages proved to become better and better with every update.

My company is half-switched to Macs and I was "waiting' for this release of Office to decide to keep it mixed (Macs and PCs) or make the switch to 100% Macs. Clearly, Microsoft does not give **** about us or our needs even though the RTL solution is already implemented in their codes (check out the RTL support in OneNot!).

I'm done chasing after a company that does not care.

Apple is showing me they care one update at a time:

• Pages support RTL just fine.
• Pages on Mac and iCloud are identical in terms of functionality, so even PC users at my company can access the application.
• For the odd scenarios where I need the final file in .docx extension, Pages can save to that format with no troubles at all.

Just my 2 cents.

Hello John.

As much as I don't like the answer, I can understand it from a "business point of view", even if I don't like it. The problem is that RTL support is even worse in the 2016 Preview. Whereas in the 2011 version the direction of the paragraph was wrong, the word at least were written correctly. For instance, if you take the word "hello" (in a RTL language of course), you will get "olleh". It reminds me of the dark days of Windows 3.11 (which still had better support for RTL....).

I have 2011 with a license, and so far with the preview I have seen nothing but cosmetics changes (I will need to have it some more time before saying that with certainty). Thanks to the preview I now know there's no reason to buy a license for 2016 when it comes out.

Again, I understand it strictly from a "business point of view" but I don't like it. As for the online option, it isn't always working that well, especially during times you lack internet connection (e.g. during flights).

I'm so glad it's finally pointed out.I got office 2011, installed it and voilla, no RTL support ! downloaded this free preview, installed it hoping Microsoft has finally added RTL support but still, it does not support RTL languages.It's really funny how i should stick with a joke like Apple Pages, since even that thing supports RTL and "Word for mac" does not !