Help please with Arabic on Windows 10: .pdf and .docx jumbled
Thread poster: Dan Mackey (X)
Dan Mackey (X)
Dan Mackey (X)
United States
Local time: 03:12
Arabic to English
Mar 21, 2017

I have a specific document in two formats, .pdf and .docx, that I cannot open without it being jumbled in either Adobe or Microsoft Word. I also tried numerous different PDF viewers like Foxit. I also tried Google Docs.

I can and do open Arabic .docx files all the time and have translation experience but i am confused about this particular file because I sent it to a colleague and he was able to open it fine.

I would be forever grateful if someone could talk me throug
... See more
I have a specific document in two formats, .pdf and .docx, that I cannot open without it being jumbled in either Adobe or Microsoft Word. I also tried numerous different PDF viewers like Foxit. I also tried Google Docs.

I can and do open Arabic .docx files all the time and have translation experience but i am confused about this particular file because I sent it to a colleague and he was able to open it fine.

I would be forever grateful if someone could talk me through a troubleshooting so as to avoid this in the future.
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Katalin Horváth McClure
Katalin Horváth McClure  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 03:12
Member (2002)
English to Hungarian
+ ...
A few ideas to try Mar 21, 2017

The problem may be the font type. Have you tried changing the font of the document to an Arabic font in Word? Maybe you need to get the specific font the document uses.

If not, you may have some encoding issues. (Although I doubt it, as current versions of Adobe and Word should be Unicode-compatible.)
In Windows 10, try this:
Open up the Windows Settings panel and select Time & language.
Go to Region & Language, and check if you have Arabic among your languages (I
... See more
The problem may be the font type. Have you tried changing the font of the document to an Arabic font in Word? Maybe you need to get the specific font the document uses.

If not, you may have some encoding issues. (Although I doubt it, as current versions of Adobe and Word should be Unicode-compatible.)
In Windows 10, try this:
Open up the Windows Settings panel and select Time & language.
Go to Region & Language, and check if you have Arabic among your languages (I assume you do, but just to make sure.)
Next, scroll down and click on Additional date, time, & regional settings. This will bring up the Clock, Language and Region panel. Click on "Change location" under Region.
In the Region panel, click on the third tab called "Administrative".
See what you have set for "Current language for non-Unicode programs". Try setting it to Arabic.
To do that, you need to click on "Change system locale..."
You will need to reboot your computer after this, to take effect.
Then try opening your document again.

If it did not help, then you may want to go back and change the non-Unicode language setting to whatever you had before (perhaps English), and reboot again.

Sorry if it did not help...
Katalin
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Dan Lucas
Dan Lucas  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:12
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Agree with Katalin Mar 22, 2017

Katalin Horváth McClure wrote:
See what you have set for "Current language for non-Unicode programs". Try setting it to Arabic.

Dan - having recently moved to a new PC I was wondering why I was getting similar problems with certain documents and it turned out that I had not yet made the "non-Unicode" adjustment. So I would try that first.


 
Dan Mackey (X)
Dan Mackey (X)
United States
Local time: 03:12
Arabic to English
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks but did not work Mar 22, 2017

I tried but it did not work.

Thank you for the excellent instructions. Very clear and I followed all steps exactly but to no avail. The saga continues...


 


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Help please with Arabic on Windows 10: .pdf and .docx jumbled






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