Converting from Pagemaker 7.0 to Indesign CS3

Question

Lots of questions here I'm afraid, but it would be a massive help if I could get this sorted, and I only have a week or two to do it.
My colleague and I are writing an English language textbook, with separate teacher's guide and student's book. It is currently in Pagemaker but we have had a number of problems with it, including:
1. Some pages will not PDF. Various error messages are given, none of which I understand.
2. On the pages that will PDF, most of the Excel tables become black or grey boxes. They were inserted into the document via Edit>Insert Object but it does not seem possible to link them (doesn't accept OLEs or something). Nor can I Place them due to some unknown error.
3. Some of the objects, esp those pasted in from Word, jump around when PDFfing.
4. Some text and objects move when transferring between computers, messing up the formatting. This may be because my colleague and I have different printers installed, so we can't set it to the same one.
Due to these and other problems, we're thinking of transferring the book to Indesign CS3. However, I have the following problems:
1. When I try to open the Student's Book (SB), it tries to convert it to ID format, but before it opens the whole programme shuts down. There is no message or other indication of what the problem might be. It will open sections of the book when saved as different files, but not the whole thing at once. (The Teacher's Book [TB]) opens fine.)
2. The Excel tables once again become black boxes, like when PDFfing from PM. I know I can redo them either by pasting in and creating table from text (which loses formatting), or by saving the files and Placing them (saves formatting but takes a while to save each file), but there are about 230 such tables and it would take forever.
3. Other objects, such as speech bubbles pasted from Word, some Excel tables and some photos, become very low quality. They stay like this when pdffed.
4. When I open sections of the SB, the text that was in other colours all changes to black. Eventually it will all be in black anyway, but I have highlighted some text in red and blue that I want to come back to later.
In addition to solving those problems, I'd appreciate it if you could tell me:
1. if it's possible to insert multiple pages of another ID file, so that separate documents become one, as in Acrobat. (This would allow my colleague and I to work on different sections of the book at the same time but still end up with one document.) The Place function creates one solid object (if that's the right word), with all separate objects merged, and is low quality like the images/tables mentioned earlier.
2. if it's possible to save the formatting when pasting tables from Excel (and I mean pasting, not importing).
3. if it's possible to create speech bubbles (callouts) in ID. I need loads of them. They don't seem to be in the Shapes section.
4. if it creates problems if you paste stuff in without linking, e.g. speech bubbles and arrows from Word, images from PM, etc. I know it makes the file bigger, but apart from that? Someone said that may be behind the problems we had with PM.
Thanks heaps for any help.
Derek

Answer 1

#1. This is the hardest one.
First, just because it shows in Pagemaker, doesn't mean it should show in Indesign. Pagemaker lists all kinds of crap, PPD fonts, system fonts.
Courier (VGA res) is a screen font. ID won't (and shouldn't) list it and you shouldn't want to use it. Courier New is just about impossible to get rid of in Windows XP. You should substitute Courier New for Courier (VGA res).
I can't help much with Lucida Handwriting and Tekton Pro, except to
repeat my usual font advice:
1) Make sure the font is actually installed. Make sure it shows in
Control Panel > Fonts. If it's really there, delete it (make sure you
have a copy of it somewhere other than Fonts), reboot, and reinstall it. Install fonts with File > Install new font. Don't just dump it in the Fonts folder.
2) Make sure ID doesn't already list it. ID doesn't list all fonts
strictly alphabetically. For instance, note that Adobe Caslon shows up in the C section, not the A section. And Lucida Grande shows up at the bottom of the list with the Hebrew fonts. You can have a situation where you have Courier loaded, it shows in ID's font list, but on opening, ID tells you Courier is missing. The lesson here: there's more than one Courier and ID is smart enough to know the difference.
3) Search your hard drive(s) for adobefnt*.lst and delete all of the
found files. Make sure you search hidden and system folders.
4) Delete the stubborn font files and copy them from somewhere good (I think Lucida and Tekton come free with something Microsoft, probably Office). It's rare, but font files can be corrupted, and ID is more picky than most other apps.
5) Check Type > Find Font to see where your missing fonts are used. If they don't show up there, they may be used in a style but the style is not used. Maybe you don't need them at all. Maybe you just have a space or a return formatted in the missing font.
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com