Character Direction override in Word 2003 imports

Question

I've searched for Character Direction and seen mainly mentions of ME and foreign language conversions right to left and left to right. We do not use ME or any foreign language features. The behavior I'm troubleshooting for InDesign CS5 7.0.3 importing Word 2003 docs on a Windows XP macine, is as follows:
I have hundreds of Word 2003 documents, used in a production environment where editors update text daily or weekly, the production dept. imports into newsletters in InDesign. We go from import to finished product at the printer sometimes as quickly as 15 minutes.
In CS4, all of these documents import into my publications without overrides, using Microsoft Word Import options set for Customize Style Import, and style mapping used to map Word paragraph styles to ID paragraph styles
After the CS5 conversion, every one of my Word 2003 documents for all of my publications come in with overrides showing hyphenation settings and character direction that did not appear with CS4. This is despite my mapping styles, and the fact that these options can't even be (as far as I can tell) a paragraph or character override inside Word.
I went back to CS4 to make sure there were no changes in the Word docs. They worked perfectly, no overrides.
Inside Word 2003, I had to go to Tools > Language > Hyphenation and make the hyphenation setting in the Word doc match exactly the hyphenation settings for the paragraph style it was being mapped to in InDesign to make it go away at import.
Now I am left only with the character direction Left To Right override, which I can't figure out how to fix.
I can't find a way to set this in Word, and I can't find a way (since I don't have ME) to change it in InDesign. It is not practical for me to run a script for every import or continue to reset the overrides manually, because we simply don't have to the time, our deadlines are too tight and frequent. Plus, if we miss one, there are definite consequences, because the data is exported in a variety of formats for reuse automatically via scripts, and the override is messing up my exports.
I was hoping I'd see a post that says, "Ah yes, the Word filters in CS5 were updated, and now we look for hyphenation and character direction, and here's what you can do as a workaround" but I'm not seeing anything. If I can't define left to right in the regular version of ID or in Word 2003, does anyone have an idea how I can get my import to ignore it again?

Answer 1

I hate it when I know too much about MS Word.
I don't have Word accessible right now, but you can set character direction in (the Windows version of) Word. I don't remember the exact details off-hand. Character direction is not the only overrides I've seen make its way in. I've seen some CJK features get imported as overrides as well (by users not using CJK languages).
It actually depends on your OS and your version of Word, I think. In Word 2007 on Windows 7, you need to have a RTL keyboard installed in order to expose the right-to-left-paragraph and left-to-right-paragraph buttons on the ribbon. I think that Asian scripts are on in all installs of Word 2007, but since our OS has some Asian keyobards turned on by default by Group Policy, I'm unsure of this. In Word 2003 on Windows XP, you need the, oh heck I can't visualise the menu, something like "Enable complex script support for right-to-left languages" in the Region and Language tab in Control Panel.
For all recent versions of Word, you can check the Fonts window (control-D) to see if you have one, two, or three scripts enabled.
Font = Latin-script
Asian text font = CJK
Complex scripts = Thai/Lao/etc. and Arabic/Farsi/etc.
Finally: It's possible to have a RTL paragraph in a Word document on the machine of someone who does not have the Complex Scripts dropdown in the Font menu in Word. Likewise, it's possible to have paragraph styles in Word with CJK information on a machine that does not have CJK support turned on in Word (I have seen this numerous times in the Win XP/Office 2003 era).
So, in terms of the original post - I haven't yet figured out if this is a new feature of CS5, or something about one's install of Word or Windows, but there are so many variables that the only obvious solution to me is "a workflow in which overrides are always cleared." You don't like that solution, I understand, but any other solution would require some extended troubleshooting of the entire workflow, including all installs of Word that might contribute a Word doc to be placed in ID.