Paste Urdu text straight from InPage into Word and you'll almost always get the same result: rows of symbols, boxes, or letters that don't match anything you typed. This isn't a copy-paste mistake and it isn't damaged text — InPage stores Urdu using its own legacy character encoding, and Word has no way to read that encoding directly. What you're actually looking at is correct InPage data being interpreted as something it isn't.
The fix is a proper conversion, not a font change. Here's how to do it.
Why InPage text breaks in Word
Unicode — the format Word, browsers, and phones all read natively — assigns one fixed code to every Urdu letter, agreed on across every platform. InPage was built before that was reliable, so it uses its own internal character mapping instead, designed to work through its own matching fonts. Word simply doesn't know how to translate those InPage character codes into the Urdu letters they represent, so it displays whatever those codes happen to map to in Word's own default interpretation — which is where the gibberish comes from.
If you've run into this and want the fuller explanation of why it happens, our guide on gibberish Urdu text walks through it in detail. Short version: this is an encoding problem, not a font problem, so installing a Nastaliq font on the pasted text won't fix it — the underlying data itself needs to be converted first.
Step-by-step: converting InPage text to Word
1. Get the InPage text. Copy the Urdu text directly from
InPage, or if it's already saved as a .txt file, you can upload
that instead.
2. Paste or upload into the converter. On the InPage to Unicode converter, select the "InPage → Unicode" tab, then paste the copied text or upload the file. Auto-detect will usually catch which direction you need automatically based on the character pattern.
3. Check the output. The converted Unicode text appears instantly on the right, with a live character count. Any character the tool couldn't confidently map gets flagged rather than silently guessed at, so you can spot-check just those specific characters if any appear.
4. Export as a Word document. Use the .docx export option to download the result as a ready-to-use Word file — this is the fastest path if you're going straight into a document, since it comes out already formatted correctly.
5. Or copy and paste directly. If you're inserting the text into an existing Word document rather than starting a new one, just copy the converted output and paste it in directly — it'll display correctly since it's now standard Unicode text.
Why the .docx export saves you a step
When you export as .docx rather than copying and pasting, the
file comes with the correct Urdu Unicode font and right-to-left text direction
already applied — you're not left fixing paragraph direction or hunting for
the right font afterward. If you paste the converted text into an existing
document instead, just make sure that paragraph is set to right-to-left and
using a standard Unicode Urdu font, so it displays and prints the way it's
meant to.
What to expect with formatting
The text itself — every letter, space, and line break — converts accurately. What doesn't transfer is InPage's own page layout: column arrangements, text boxes, and precise positioning are specific to InPage's layout engine and don't have a Word equivalent to map onto. Once the text is in Word, you'll place and format it using Word's own tools, the same as with any newly added text.
If something doesn't look right
A few common, non-error situations to know about:
- English words, numbers, or punctuation mixed into the InPage text (common in bylines, page numbers, or brand names) pass through untouched — they're already in a format Word reads natively, so there's nothing to convert there.
- A few characters flagged as unmapped usually means the original InPage document used an uncommon diacritic or a slightly non-standard font variant rather than the widely-used InPage 3/2009-era character set this tool targets. The specific flagged characters are shown so you can review just those spots by hand instead of the whole document.
- Text that still looks wrong after conversion, but only in certain apps — double-check the paragraph/text direction is set to right-to-left wherever you're viewing it. Converted Unicode text is correct as data even if a particular view hasn't been set to display it right-to-left yet.
As with the Word-to-InPage direction, everything runs locally in your browser — no file is uploaded to a server, and there's no realistic length limit, so a full chapter or article converts just as easily as a short paragraph.
Converting the other direction
If you're working the other way — starting with Urdu text in Word and need it inside InPage for layout or print — that's covered step-by-step in how to convert Word Urdu text to InPage.