Read / Write Arabic on MS office 2008

[chowsir88]

Hell All,
I am new on the fourm and I have the following question for the MS office 2008 to able read /write arabic on Mac. my boss told me that from our IT manager has a friend is Arab to using Mac with Leopard with Office 2008 able to using Arabic text, his said the friend purchased a Albayan font from Micorsoft able the do so and he forgot how to purchased or got it???

This is a ture statement, please advice.

Ricky

[michl]

I think this has been covered before on these forums... Alway try to search first.

Also, Al Bayan in included with Mac OS X along with several other arabic fonts, so no need to purchase them.

[chowsir88]

Michl,

Thanks for the information, now I boss just told me that our IT manager has other friends told him that to upgrade Snow Leopard and disable the Arial and Times New Roman. Than the office 2008 will works able to read and write. I dont think so and just wants to confirm with you or others.

Thanks all

Ricky

[Magnus]

As far as I know the MS Office - Arabic font issue is gone with Mac OS X 10.6.

[chowsir88]

Magnus,

Wow, this is good news. Have you try it and will works? So I am installing Snow Leopard and MS Office 2008 with SP2, disable the two fonts and I can read/write Arabic?

Ricky

[Thamir]

As far as I know the MS Office - Arabic font issue is gone with Mac OS X 10.6.

NOPE, sorry to say, Arabic & MS Office are still strangers in 10.6 - it's Microsoft's lack of support for Unicode and BiDi that hasn't changed since 2004. Disabling Arial & TNR does nothing to fix this. It may fix font rendering on a few websites in Safari, but Office DOES NOT support Arabic in Snow Leopard (or any version of OSX).

[Magnus]

Magnus,

Wow, this is good news. Have you try it and will works? So I am installing Snow Leopard and MS Office 2008 with SP2, disable the two fonts and I can read/write Arabic?

Ricky

Well, I don't read or write Arabic so I'm not the person to tell you. But that's what I've heard from people who do work with Arabic. Someone else would have to confirm it though.

[Thamir]

I can confirm that Office DOES NOT support Arabic from personal experience. Also, Check here from the Office support forum/ Feb 2010

[Magnus]

NOPE, sorry to say, Arabic & MS Office are still strangers in 10.6 - it's Microsoft's lack of support for Unicode and BiDi that hasn't changed since 2004. Disabling Arial & TNR does nothing to fix this. It may fix font rendering on a few websites in Safari, but Office DOES NOT support Arabic in Snow Leopard (or any version of OSX).

Yes, I should have been more clear. Office still doesn't support Arabic in 10.6 but at least it doesn't also mess up fonts for all other apps.

[michl]

Looks like this site "the Arabic Macintosh" is the definite reference - amazingly comprehensive!

The site even explains why "no version of Microsoft Word for the Mac supports Arabic, and it is unlikely that any ever will..."

Also recommends OpenOffice and then Mellel as the best free / commercial alternatives to M$ Office / Word. (The latter is probably the best word processor for the Mac, regardless of language.)