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AntonioTheAnt
Known Participant
February 28, 2026
Question

RTL text in InDesign

  • February 28, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 10 views

Hello, I need to create an Arabic version of a brochure. My InDesign is in Italian and I don't understand how to activate RTL because after selecting the “Adobe World Ready” composition in the “Paragraph” panel, I don't see any new icons/buttons as shown on this Adobe page:
https://helpx.adobe.com/it/indesign/using/arabic-hebrew.html
Obviously, I would like to continue using the Italian version of InDesign because 99.999% of my work is in Italian.

Thanks

    1 reply

    Joel Cherney
    Community Expert
    Joel CherneyCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 28, 2026

    I don’t know how complicated your brochure is, but I’m guessing that you would need to install the version of InDesign that right-to-left tools with an English interface. (I don’t believe that it’ll do RTL tools with Italian interface, but honestly I’ve never tried.) You’d do that by going to the Apps section of the Preferences in the Creative Cloud app and selecting a language like English (Arabic) or English (Hebrew). Then go to the Apps category and your “Open” button for InDesign will have turned into an “Install” button. Click it (no need to uninstall first) and it’ll install the RTL tools. Then you can do your Arabic brochure, and go through the same choose-a-language-and-install steps to go back to your Italian localization when you’re done.

     

    There are plenty of other ways to handle Arabic in InDesign (buying plugins, writing one’s own Javascript, etc.), but this one is both free and fast.

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