parenthesis flipped in arabic text indesign

[josinepw]

if i copy text from a word file, all arabic text is shown correct except the parenthesis. I've tried "world ready single line composer tricks", paragraph styles, languages... just cant solve it. Any ideas? I'm using indesign 15.1

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Did you try Placing (File > Place) the text from Word into InDesign instead of copying and pasting? Do you mind sharing a portion of the Word document for my testing so I can give you a sound suggestion?

[josinepw]

Hi Zaid Al Hilali,

thank you for your reply. Yes i've tried that, see files attached.

Thank you for trying!

[Zaid Al Hilali · Accepted solution]

I tested the file in InDesign 2021 on Mac OS Big Sur and Catalina. I Placed the Word file in InDesign and got the same unacceptable results as yours.

I tried Find/Replace in Word, and Find/Change in InDesign, but failed to change all parenthesis! I was able to replace one set of parenthesis such as this ) in Word and InDesign, but when I try to replace the other parenthesis ( it goes and change all or let's say both sides ( ) to this ) for example, which made me think that the Word file is buggy. It could be the way Word file was saved in the first place is to blame!

This is what I ended up doing, in Word I searched using Find/Replace for ( and replaced it to ), then replaced other parentheses manually. I Placed the file into InDesign and all was good. Same action can be done within InDesign using Find/Change to replace one side of Parenthesis, then manually change other side.

I know the above is not a solution, but I guess we have many variables involved such as…

• Mac/Windows
• Arabic/English
• Adobe InDesign / M.S. Word

all these variables together contribute usually to problematic content which we need to address manually usually I'm afraid.

[josinepw]

Thank you Zaid!

I indeed did the same. Thanks a lot, and i will just have to fix it manually.