Finding and replacing characters or words in Indic, Southeast Asian, and right-to-left languages in Microsoft Office products presents special challenges because of contextual shaping, word-breaking rules, and the use of diacritical marks in many of these languages. Some search features in Microsoft Office do not work with some languages.

Right-to-left languages

Find-and-replace features search text in the order in which the text is entered, rather than the order in which it is displayed. Therefore, you can search for strings of right-to-left text, regardless of the direction of the paragraph. You can also search for matches of characters with or without kashidas (Arabic only), Alef Hamzas (Arabic only), or diacritics .

Southeast Asian languages

Southeast Asian languages (such as Thai and Vietnamese) may not be compatible with every search option in Microsoft Office. For example, the Match case and Find whole words only options do not work for Southeast Asian characters. However, these options can still be used to find matching Latin characters in the same document.

Indic languages

Indic languages (such as Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu) may not be compatible with every search option in Microsoft Office. For example, the Match case and Find whole words only options do not work for scripts in these languages. However, these options can still be used to find matching Latin characters in the same document.