IDCS3: Why Does DOCX Import Not Preserve Internal Word Links?

Question

I have the task of importing Word docs into InDesign/InCopy such that Word-defined internal links are accurately reflected in InDesign. CS3 does a pretty good job of importing .docx files from a formatting standpoint, but it doesn't preserve internal links (e.g., Word hyperlinks that point to Word bookmarks).
Looking at how hyperlinks are represented in ID/IC and how they're represented in Word I can't see any obvious reason why InDesign wouldn't be able to preserve them: there appears to be a good match between the two formats (Word bookMark maps to ID named anchor, Word hyperlink to a bookmark maps to ID hyperlink to a bookmark). Word bookMarks have a lot of potential complexity for other things (e.g., expressions and formulas), but that's no reason to simply discard or ignore all bookmarks and links. At least that's my initial analysis--I can't claim to have thought through the problem is as great a depth as the ID implementors have.
I can implement the processing on the Word end to produce something I can then process in InDesign to reconstitute the links, but I'd rather not have to if InDesign can do it for me.
Anyway, just curious.
Thanks,
Eliot

Answer 1

Per previous discussion here: I'm importing book text from Word docs into InDesign text that does not have complicated tables or tabbing but has footnotes and a lot of italic, bold italic, and bold text. / My impression is that the best way to import text using InDesign's Place command is to keep it simple and select 'Remove styles and formatting' and 'Preserve Local Overrides' under 'Formatting'. This seems the best guarantee that italic, bold, and bold italic line-level styling in the Word doc will be preserved. / But as to retaining paragraph styling of, say, indented quotes, this then gets lost. Is there any particular way text should be paragraph-styled in the Word doc, to enhance what comes over into InDesign? (I noted that it seems best not to base Word paragraph styles on 'Normal', for instance.) I'm hesitant to ask this, since using InDesign's Place > 'Preserve styles and formatting from text and tables' import option seems to lead to lots of messy complications. Anyway, I need to preserve the line-level italic and bold styling if nothing else.