text direction in Comments balloon

[Peter T. Daniels]

I've been asked to comment (in English) on a document written (in
English) by an Israeli scholar (in Word2007 Compatibility Mode, it's
a .doc file). The Comment balloons are in right-to-left mode (as for
typing Hebrew), which makes the text (as well as the introductory
labeling, which it would be nice to do without) hug the right edge.

I can change the text direction in each paragraph individually with
the button on the Home tab, but the Text Direction buttons in the
Modify Style panel are grayed out. I can't find a text direction
setting for the whole document.

How do I make the Comments left-to-right by default?

 

[Stefan Blom]

How strange!

Just to be clear, are you looking at *paragraph* styles for text direction?
Comment Text and Balloon Text? I can't test it myself since I have never
looked at a Hebrew document.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Comments Text, since that's what the little window said the comment
was formatted as ... but not Balloon Text. (To be clear, there's no
Hebrew anywhere in the document. That's just the owner's presumed home
language setting.)

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Just checked Balloon Text -- it too has Direction grayed out, but the
dropdown above it for Alignment was set to Right. Changing it to Left
had no effect.

But the Styles panel (the one with the AA icon button) is also flush
right, so the orientation is very deeply set.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Grasping at straws here, but ... Could there be a setting in the Page Setup
dialog box?

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

There is ... and when I switched that, it took a long time to think
about it (2 sec at least), but when I inserted a new Comment -- no
change.

 

[Stefan Blom]

This is a mystery, not to mention annoying. :-( You should definitely be
able to modify the style, especially since you can modify the paragraph
formatting.