Arabic text flips over when pasted from Excel to Illustrator CC 2019 (v23.0.4)

[treefrog designs]

I'm at my wits end with this... I cannot cut and paste arabic text from an excel spreadsheet to Adobe Illustrator CC 2019 (v23.0.4), without it not only flipping (i was expecting this), but it also looking like a completely different font, although I'm using standard Arial in both...! I've tried following all the tutorials all advice all settings and nothing is accurately representing the text.... HELP!!

{Renamed by MOD}

[SJRiegel]

Have you tried placing the text instead of using copy - paste?

[treefrog designs]

Unfortunately you can't place an excel spreadsheet into illustrator!?

[Steve Werner]

Are you working on a Macintosh or in Windows? Apparently, it works better to copy from Excel for Windows.

Here's an old discussion but it describes different workarounds for bringing Excel into Illustrator (creating a PDF, copying data into an Illustrator graph, etc.)

Illustrator CS5 - Coping from Excel and pasting into Illustrator

[treefrog designs]

On a Mac, yes it's nightmare, nothing works... I've followed all the settings and tutorials and it doesn't match exactly. And i don't know the subtleties of the language to know whether it's correct or not....

I'll try that though....

[Srishti Bali]

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. As per your query, text flips over and looks different while you are trying to copy-paste text from excel sheet to Illustrator. Let us make this right for you. I would request if you can share a few more details like:

• OS (Exact version of Windows/MAC)
• Few screenshots of the issue.
• A sample file with the Arabic text
• Is the issue related to a specific document? If yes, can you please share the document with us?

Regards,

Srishti

[meganchi]

Have you tried these steps?

How to write Arabic in Illustrator from right to left - Quora

For pasting Arabic text into Adobe Illustrator CS 6:

1. Copy the text from your excel document
2. In AI, select the text tool and create a box for text
3. Select Arial as the font
4. Paste the text. The text will appear backwards (In reality it is pasting as a mirror image of itself).
5. Select the text box with the pointer tool
6. Go to the top bar in AI and select: Object>Transform>Reflect
7. In the popup box, select Vertical, under Axis and click OK.

The Arabic text will now display properly and you can edit Character/Paragraph, Color, etc. settings as needed without disrupting it. You can resize the text box to fit your layout space.

[Zaid Al Hilali]

I believe the issue is with Excel not with Illustrator, as only latest Microsoft Office on Mac (2016) and above do support Arabic.

I'm using MS Excel 2018, copied Arabic and pasted it in Illustrator 2019 the result was as expected, never the less if you have Adobe InDesign with ME support, I would PLACE the excel file there not copy/paste, then copy from InDesign to Illustrator if needed… I know this is a long process but at least you may File>Place in InDesign any Excel files.

[Jorge250669391mhf]

I think the problem is with illustrator. Also copying from the web browser and it's doing the same thing