Designing in Arabic in InDesign on a mac

Well, here's what I see in the CC app. I have "English (اللغة العربية)" selected as my default language in the Apps section of the prefs for the CC app. If I go look at the InDesign app in the Apps section, there's a blue button that says "Open." If I then go back to the CC prefs and switch to "English (שפה עברית)" and click on Done, then go back to the Apps section, the "Open" button has changed to an "Install" button. 

This process, for those of us who have to switch languages on a regular basis, has been cumbersome and buggy for years. None of these bugs are showstoppers, but they're there. I know that some people, when they e.g. upgrade from InDesign 18 to InDesign 19, just click the "Update" button, and it updates to the latest RTL-supporting InDesign without any further user intervention. . If I do that, I get a plain-vanilla install of Engish InDesign. I need to go select the language every time. So you might not have the same experience as is described in the documentation.

If you don't have that experience, you might have to uninstall some apps. At least once in recent years, I've had to uninstall InDesign and Creative Cloud both, with the Cleaner Tool, in order to get the right version of InDesign.  

Alternately, if you're a WIndows user, there are ways to install multiple language versions of the same version of InDesign at the same time. This thread documents them; one method relies on making multiple installations and editing an .xml file, and the other, posted by Ken Lunde, relies on registry hacks. Both methods are perfectly functional, though. If there are comparable end-user hacks one could use on the Mac platform, I don't know about them. 

Did you install the MEL (Middle Eastern Languages) version of InDesign? You need it for full RTL support, and better alphabetical and diacritics support in Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi etc.

I believe you can have two language versions installed at any one time (the third major version being CJK, for Asian languages).

@alanbingle 

I've moved your post from Creative Cloud Desktop to the InDesign forum for you.

See if this helps:

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/arabic-hebrew.html

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The help on here says to use the test direction setting in the character panel

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Use the Character panel to change direction for a few words in the paragraph. Use the Paragraph panel to change the entire paragraph. Best practice is to use Paragraph (and Character) Styles.

Jane