Italicised Arabic

We are buildng a course in Storyline in Arabic. The text in the file is cut and pasted from a MS Word document. At times, the words cut and paste fine. At others, the text is italicised and cannot be 'un'italicised. We have tried reformatting the text in both the Storyline file, italicising, unitalicising, using a different font, etc. The only time it 'unitalicises' is when we make the text bold. To further complicate the situation, the text sometimes appear correct (unitalicised) in the storyview when we're editing and only turns up as italicised when it's previewed and exported. 

Any recommendations from those working in Arabic or who have had similar issues with other languages?