Paragraph alignment changes when opening Word 97 file in Word 2002 (293337)

NOTE: This article discusses complex scripts functionality. Complex scripts functionality is available when you use the Office Language Settings tool to enable a language, such as Arabic or Hebrew, that requires this functionality. For more information about multilingual features, click Microsoft <I BRACKET="YES">your Office product</I> Help on the Help menu, type multilingual features in the Office Assistant or the Answer Wizard, and then click Search to view the topics that are returned.

SYMPTOMS

When you create a document in a right-to-left version of Microsoft Word 97 (Arabic or Hebrew) and then open the document in Microsoft Word 2002, the paragraph alignment changes from right-aligned to left-aligned or vice versa.

CAUSE

This problem occurs when the following conditions are true:

The direction and/or alignment of the style does not match the direction of the Normal style.

-and-
Additional manual formatting was applied that again changes the alignment and/or direction of the text.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, from Word 97, save the file as Rich Text Format (RTF) and then open it in Word 2002. To save the file as RTF, follow these steps:

Open the file in Word 97.
On the File menu, click Save As.
In the Files of type list, click Rich Text Format (*.rtf) and then click Save.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.