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AntonioTheAnt
Known Participant
February 28, 2026
Question

How to Enable RTL (Right-to-Left) Arabic Text in InDesign Italian Version Without Switching Interface Language

  • February 28, 2026
  • 4 replies
  • 102 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

    4 replies

    Willi Adelberger
    Community Expert
    Willi AdelbergerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 1, 2026

    Install a ME version of InDesign. You can do it without uninstalling your normal version. It will add needed plugins to get a RTL UI.

    Peter Kahrel
    Community Expert
    Peter KahrelCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 1, 2026

    Clever trick, to use placeholder text to create a paragraph style, I didn’t know about that. But that’s all you get: a paragraph style with right-to-left and the world paragraph composer applied. Other things (story direction, binding, characters style, etc.) aren’t handled.

     

    To apply other features you can use this script:

    https://creativepro.com/files/kahrel/indesign/middle-eastern-panel.html

    It’s not intended to replace InDesign’s Middle-East version entirely, more to handle occasional right-to-left text in otherwise English texts.

      Joel Cherney
      Community Expert
      Joel CherneyCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      March 1, 2026

      I honestly didn’t suggest the placeholder text trick because it it somewhat limited, and it’s not easy to explaIn those limitations to people who aren’t already experienced in typesetting right-to-left languages. Peter, I think that your panel covers essentially all of the use cases for AntonioTheAnt’s “I just have to do this one brochure” scale of RTL typesetting. 

       

      For example, if you paste your text into Arabic placeholder text, you’re going to get only eastern Arabic (aka Arabic-Indic digits, as in “٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩”). Most of your global Arabic commercial audiences are going to see that as quite old-fashioned, which is strikes me as something you should want to avoid. If your input text has any parenthetical English bits, it’s likely that you would need to interfere manually with character direction, or story direction. These few issues are the vast majority of what I see in an InDesign localization project into Arabic, and so I’m very pleased to see that a dropdown menu to address each of these concerns can be found in Peter’s Middle Eastern tool panel. 

       

      Antonio, I strongly suggest that you have your final brochure proofread by some kind of Arabic-reading translation pro; it’s extraordinarily easy to make mistakes in laying out languages you can’t read.

        A
        AntonioTheAntAuthor
        Known Participant
        March 1, 2026

        My brochure is fairly simple, so I don't know about more complex projects, but all I had to do was follow the advice given to me on the Facebook group: create a new text box, Ctrl+Click on the "Fill with Placeholder Text" then choose "Arabic". From that box, I created a paragraph and character style and assigned it to the other texts as well. That's all there is to it.
        In my humble opinion, complex software such as InDesign should include the option to insert RTL text in any of its versions by default.

         

        Joel Cherney
        Community Expert
        Joel CherneyCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        March 1, 2026

        In my humble opinion, complex software such as InDesign should include the option to insert RTL text in any of its versions by default.

         

        It does! I mean, I told you about The Formal Method, and you came up with one of the three Quick and Dirty Methods. But I feel certain that someone in marketing, back in the early 2000s when InDesign was new, ran the numbers on “Who’d be more offended? Who wouldn’t buy the Creative Suite because of something Arabic-related? Is it the punter who is offended that you can’t just do Arabic in this app, or is it the punter who is offended by seeing tools for Arabic that they’ll never use?” 

        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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