Importing Word with indents & italics to Indesign

Hi
When importing MS Word with paragraph indents and italics into Indesign, these features don't pull through.
Is there a way that I can get around this?

That was maybe a little brief.
Importing Word can be a complex proposition, depending on the skill and savvy or the author. Most don't have a clue about using paragraph and character styles properly, so everything is "Normal" with local formatting applied.
In InDesign you will probably want to create your own styles (that default 1/2 inch indent in word is way to big, for example) and you have the choice of either mapping to them during import, or assigning them after you've cleaned up the text, which is commonly the better choice. You'll want to preserve all of the isolated bold, italic, and similar formatting applied locally, then find it and convert to similar character styles. Use paragraph styles for pretty much everything else.
Peter

Similar Messages

Help needed for importing Word with notes

Hello everyone,
I have a Word document that has about 80 short sections to it. Each section has endnotes, and the note numbering restarts with 1 at the beginning of each section. I have tried to import this document into CS3, but each time the notes appear as endnotes at the end of the document, not the end of each section. Worse, they number consecutively across sections. Quark, which also dumps notes at the end of the document, at least retains their original numbering, so I could cut-and-paste them back in place. Any information or suggestions on how to work this in INDD? Many thanks.

mgladue wrote:
Hello everyone,
I have a Word document that has about 80 short sections to it. Each section has endnotes, and the note numbering restarts with 1 at the beginning of each section. I have tried to import this document into CS3, but each time the notes appear as endnotes at the end of the document, not the end of each section. Worse, they number consecutively across sections. Quark, which also dumps notes at the end of the document, at least retains their original numbering, so I could cut-and-paste them back in place. Any information or suggestions on how to work this in INDD? Many thanks.
This Google search should find at least a few useful suggestions: InDesign word endnotes side headings script kahrel. "Kahrel" is for Peter Kahrel, who's contributed many useful InDesign scripts to the community, especially one that manipulates endnotes.
HTH
Regards,
Peter
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

Importing Word into InDesign, problem with styles

OS 10.6, CS5
Hi everyone,
Does anyone have any experience with importing styled Word docs into InDesign?
Editors style their Word documents with some basic styles (Text, References, Headline, etc.) using a Word template that I created. Designers use import options to match the Word styles to the ID styles. This worked fine in Word 2004 and InDesign CS3: Word "text" style would map on import to the InDesign "text" style, even though they had totally different attributes. Superscripts, italics, etc. would be respected as local overrides in InDesign.
Then we upgraded to CS5. Automatic mapping on import no longer seems to work: After importing text, all the styles in InDesign have local overrides assigned to them that don't make sense (hyphenation exceptions, tab settings). So I'm left with importing the Word styles, using auto-renaming so that InDesign explicitly does NOT match styles.
Then delete the Word styles one by one from the paragraph style panel, replacing with the desired ID style.
This has gone on for several months and we've now upgraded to Office 2011 but that hasn't solved the problem.
With Word 2011 docx files, the import works almost like it did in CS3, the styles almost come in cleanly: If the style in Word has NO local overrides, such as italics or superscripts, the InDesign style is correctly applied. The problem is those local overrides in Word--InDesign not only respects the italic or superscript, it also respects the font attribute. All the Word styles are Times New Roman so all superscripts in InDesign are coming in as superscript + TNR. (see screenshot)
Are we left with our original work-around? Importing styles then manually deleting and replacing them?
This is frustrating because it used to be smooth and seamless and while some new features of CS5 are great, it's annoying that it's broken this fundamental function!
I've tried saving the Word files as doc or rtf instead of docx but this doesn't make a difference in this problem.
Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

I'm an author / publisher. I write in Word and I publish with InDesign. When I'm in the review stages, I like to edit my text in Word, so I export the text as an RTF. When I import it back into InDeisgn I often find that some of the styles have annoying overrides from Word that break things. (1) Paragraph style stuff about hyphenation and (2) Characters style stuff about Character direction: Left-to-Right style.
* Easy global fix: select the whole text open the Window | Style | Paragraph window, and click the button on the bottom to remove all overrides. And do the same for the Window | Style | Character window. Before doing this, I like to check that I don’t have any italics that are in the file as overrides rather than being in there as part of a header style or as part of the Emphasis style that I try to use throughout the text instead of just an italic override. It makes me uneasy to remove all overrides, as I always worry there might be an important one I could have kept.
* (1) Specific fix for the hyphenation overrides: Make sure the hyphenation settings in the individual InDesign paragraph styles match, so far as possible, the Word global hyphenation settings in the Page Layout | Hyphenation dialog of Word. InDesign will import any Word hyphenation settings that don’t match the InDesign doc styles as overrides.
Specifically, set InDesign Hyphen Limit to ( say) 1 and set Word | Hyphenation | Hyphenation Options | Limit consecutive hyphens to the same number (say) 1. Also set InDesign Paragraph Style Hyphenation | Hyphenation Zone to (say) 0.5” and set Word | Hyphenation | Hyphenation Options | Hyphenation Zone to the same number (say) 0.5”. And turn off all the InDesign optional hyphenation check boxes at the bottom of the dialog, and the turn off the two check boxes in the Word Hyphenation Options box as well.In Word you should also set Hyphenation | Automatic. If you cautiously set Word Hyphenation | None the import will throw a “Hyphenation” override on the hyphenated paragraph styles, even though this maikes no sense.
You may still pick up some hyphenation related overrides on your heder styles, if you have set the headers not to hyphenate. You can either dump the overrides in InDesign or you can set your header styles to hyphenate…and be careful not have any headers actually be longer than one line.
(2) I still haven't found the fix for the Left-to-Right text override.

InDesign CS5: italics missing from imported Word document

While working on a book, I've come to notice that some italics in the original Word document didn't make it into my InDesign document.
I'm doing some tests (with different import options) right now but so far I don't understand the logic of it. The missing styles, only italics, can be "real" italic or "faux" italic.
Before posting the result of my tests, I'd like to know if some of you have encountered the same problem?

@ Peter Spier: thank you for the script, very useful.
As you can read below, I'd prefer to avoid importing all the styles from the Word files. When you have 300 Word documents, the cleaning in InDesign can become a tedious task…
So, I've made some tests, the Word file I'm using comes from my client. In one ¶, a group of words is set in faux italic (typeface Times New Roman) in another ¶, the same group of words is also in faux italic. I guess, since Times New Roman has a true italic, that Word uses the true italic. I can see that from the shape of the one-story "a".
1. import the original Word document (as received from my client), use a custom Import Option which ""Remove Styles And Formatting From Text And Tables" but "Preserve Local Overrides ". I don't want to get the styles from Words, especially when the sources are diverse but the import has to retain Italic + Bold.
results: one group appears in roman (typeface Minion Pro Regular) and the other in italic (Minion Pro Italic)!
2. import the resaved Word document from Word 2011: .doc and .docx, import options unchanged
results: same as 1.
3. import the original Word document, use another custom Import Option which "Imports Styles from Word", which I'd rather not do but…
results: both groups appear in Italic now

Can no longer import Word files into InDesign

Hello,
For many months I have been importing Word files into InDesign CS3 (Mac OSX 10.4.11) with no trouble, but I started having a problem yesterday.
When importing a 17-page Word file with 16 footnotes, I got none of the text and only the footnote numbers. This is what I get in InDesign:
12345678910111213141516
(Endnotes)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
These are the things I've tried already: restarting, deleting preferences, changing the import options, using CS2, importing someone else's Word file, importing a Word file that I imported successfully a couple of months ago. None of this works.
It has been suggested that I save the Word file as rtf, but since I have 200 files to import and I'm using Word's character styles for italics, bold, small caps, etc., I'd rather try to fix this problem.
Can someone help?
Thanks,
Tina

I am using indesign CS2 and i'm trying to import a Word document into a new chapter for a book i'm laying out. it's about 30 pages, but there are at least 80 foot notes. i'm able to get about 1/2 of the document with the footnotes to flow correctly, then EVERYTHING disappears. the only way i've been able to get the remaining text to appear is by adding characters to the text. i'll hit "vvvvvvvvvvvv" a bunch of times and "magically" a little chunk of text and it's footnotes appears. then the ole disappearing act happens. so i do it again. i'm able to get all the text to appear finally, but when i delete the "vvvvvvvvvv" from the places i inserted them, the text disappears again. i have no idea why this is happening or how to fix it. any ideas?
thanks so much,
travis

Issues importing word into indesign and keeping notes/superscripts

Hi
I have a job coming up where I will need to import word documents into indesign that come from various sources.
I did some web surfing and discovered I should be able to do it by placing the word document into my template. It seemed to work when I first tried it, but I have now discovered that only the first few notes have from through (first 14 to be precise). Then the numbers disappear (and are replaced by soft returns) until note 33 where they jump back in. But of course this starts at the next number missing, so in this case 15. Which of course means all the numbers are out of order and so need to be fixed.
I would just input or fix manually but as I have 15 stories place and format and the first one has 95 notes... I am hoping to find a less time consuming solution.
I am guessing it is something in how the author has edited the word document, but I truly have no idea.
Any suggestions as best way to overcome this? Ideally something I can ask the authors to fix. Or is there something in the import options?
I am about to get EXTREMELY desperate with this issue.
Thanking you call in advance.
Cheers
Nikola

OK after some more web seraching I have tried saving as and RFT file and that seemed to work. So fingers crossed.
Using these settings:
If anyone knows why it happened please let me know as it would be most useful.
Thanks
N

Import Word Hyperlinks in InDesign

All,
I have a Word document which contains hyperlinks but when I import Word document into InDesign all of my hyperlinks are missing.
Can you please let me know how can I retain hyperlinks such that when I export to PDF I can able to retain it. Please advise.
Application version: CS2
OS: Windows XP
Thanks,
Sam

> I have a Word document which contains hyperlinks but when I import Word document into InDesign all of my hyperlinks are missing.
I don't think it's possible to remove hyperlinks when Placing. Do you
see your hyperlinks in the Hyperlinks palette (I think Window >
Interactive > Hyperlinks, but I'm looking at CS3 now)?
Janet says hyperlinks are not active in ID but become active in PDF.
This is not really true. You should be able to see each hyperlink in ID
as text with a box around it. You can test a link in ID by pressing the
right arrow in the palette (Go to hyperlink destination). In this
respect they are active in ID, and you can keep them active by including
hyperlinks when you export PDF.
Acrobat interprets (poorly, IMO) certain text combinations as
hyperlinks. So text that looks like a URL may be displayed in Acrobat as
a link, even if it's not a valid link. You can turn this on or off in
Acrobat with Preferences > General > Automatically detect URLs from
text. This has nothing to do with ID hyperlinks.
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com

Indesign cs2 - imported word hyperlinks invisible

when i import a word doc the hyper links are invisiblr and have a box around them. i have tried changing the properties with no luck. the only solution i have found was to delte hyper links in word, import and create new links in indesign. takes way to much time, can anyone help.

Hyperlinks invisible and they have a box around them? What's that then, an invisible box?
A "Hyperlink" does not have to be visible. Any word you see, any image, indeed, any box (invisible or not) can be a hyperlink. InDesign is aware of this, and so it defaults to showing a box around text hyperlinks -- but if you don't like that, all you have to do is select the hyperlink and change its properties in the Hyperlinks panel. However, these are the properties of the hyperlink -- not that of the clickable text that's linked. InDesign does not "do" anything to this text, you will have to "make it visible" yourself.
If you want to make links "visible" by making them blue and underlined, you will have to select each one of them and make the text blue & underlined.
But -- if you imported the text out of Word, you usually get a character style applied to all hyperlinks (as this is something that Word does do, whether you like it or not). So changing the character style will change the appearance of all text that have this character style applied to them.

Import word files in InDesign but only Form Text or selected styles

Hi Guys,
I have this magazine I design a few times a year and the articles are sent to me as word-files with tables they have to fill in in order to know who the author is, what the title will be etc.
I would like to find a way to easily import the content of their articles etc. in Indesign and I found out that importing Word files is simple as goodbye. Me happy!
But now I constantly have to copy-paste their article text out of the table and paste it elsewhere in the InDesign file, so I thought: isn't there a possibility to, while importing the word file, select what styles should be imported (so that the instructions I put in the template for their word articles for instance won't be put into the InDesign file but only the forms they fill in) or can I setup the importing of it to only import the form field text (if the word file would be set up as a form with protected items fields they can fill in?).
Many thanks!
Bob

I am using indesign CS2 and i'm trying to import a Word document into a new chapter for a book i'm laying out. it's about 30 pages, but there are at least 80 foot notes. i'm able to get about 1/2 of the document with the footnotes to flow correctly, then EVERYTHING disappears. the only way i've been able to get the remaining text to appear is by adding characters to the text. i'll hit "vvvvvvvvvvvv" a bunch of times and "magically" a little chunk of text and it's footnotes appears. then the ole disappearing act happens. so i do it again. i'm able to get all the text to appear finally, but when i delete the "vvvvvvvvvv" from the places i inserted them, the text disappears again. i have no idea why this is happening or how to fix it. any ideas?
thanks so much,
travis

Importing Word Docs with Images into RH7

Hi All,
I have a large Word doc which is full of images and text that
I want to import into RH7. I've tried it and tried it, even
converted it to PDF and tried it, but I don't get any of the images
imported. I've discovered the images folder, but there's nothing in
it and, just in case they're hidden(!), I've published and still no
images.
Can anyone help me with this?
Thanks!

No I have only been using it since Word 2 days. :-)
Please don't mention the limit of 200 pages with graphics to
my documents which can run to over twice that size.
I repeat the point that if Word is struggling with this
particular document, you cannot expect another application to work
well with the document. RH does import Word documents with many
images, it is something that I have done many times. I think the
problem is something to do with the image type you have chosen
(emz). If you look in the image import dialog you will see that EMZ
is not a listed file type.
Without being able to see your document, it is difficult to
help you. Speak to your management. I regularly receive projects
from people on this forum and nobody has ever had cause to
complain. I would not risk losing the Adobe Community Expert status
by revealing the content to anyone.

Importing Word Documents with Images

Hi, When I import word document in to Robohelp, it imports
the images also. Now, I have duplicate images in multiple topics.
How do I avoid duplicate images being imported? Is there anyway,
where I can collate and store all the images in a single folder,
instead of saving it in multiple folders?

quote:
Originally posted by:
markpud
Nice idea... I too have a Warning and Note icon repeated on
almost every page.. but I don't find it too much bother to paste
over the top with the "proper" icon after importing :)
You're right. One reason this plan never came to fruition is
because this doesn't take a lot of time.
When I first came aboard, I envisioned a lot of importing of
Word documents where each change was done to a Word doc (complete
with macros and useful AutoText) and then imported into RoboHelp.
Then, a global search would take care of the image problem. But
that isn't really our MO, so this never happened.
Although, it's a great way to create a new project. Author
your Word documents with meaningful characters to represent each
icon. Then when you import everything, just include the graphic
once and then do a global search.
Kevin

Trouble with CHM Search & Index after Importing Word Document

Greetings,
I have recently inherited all things RoboHelp at work, but the last person to work with our projects left 6 months ago. I received a brief overview of how our CHM files were generated from the same word document in RH HTML 7.
Currently, I am using RoboHelp HTML 9, but am having trouble with the Index and Search functionality from an imported Word 2003 (.doc) file. During my import, only a single topic is created and named after the source document. I believe this may be the root of my problems, but haven't had much luck with a solution.
I have stumbled my way through setting after setting, but feel I am missing something obvious. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Ken
Background:
Our source documents have a working TOC and Heading 1-3 structure. When creating a new project and importing the document, the TOC is imported correctly. The TOC navigations links seem to function correctly.
I have used the Smart Index Wizard to find new keywords from topic titles and topic text. Unfortunately it seems the import only creates a single topic named after the source word document and therefore associates all keywords with the single topic. when trying to navigate the index after the CHM is generated, all links simply reference the beginning of the document.
When using the search feature in the CHM, only a single result is returned for any search words. This result is always the single topic as described above. The results link always returns you to the start of the document but does highlight the keyword throughout the document.

When you import there is an Advanced button in one of the dialogs. Click that and you will be able to Paginate against chosen styles. That will break your document into topics.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

Working with imported Word documents

I've noticed that Pages (for iOS) gets very slow and laggy -- especially the on--screen keyboard -- when working with imported Word documents. Is there a method to convert imported files to native Pages documents, and thereby maybe speed up the app?

Turns out, it's not just Word-imports that are slow. Pages in general is just slow, and seems to have become this way after the iOS 5 upgrade.

Help with image file names when using Import Word document feature

Hello,
I am using File >> Import >> Word document into an HTML template. If the Word document contains images, the images are written to the directory specified in my Site Default Image Folder. Here is my question: As I was teaching myself the Import function, one time the images were automatically named to match the page name. So for example, if my page is named Create.html, the images would be named Create_image001.jpg, Create_image002.jpg, etc. I can't remember how I enabled this feature (or maybe I was dreaming) but if anyone knows how to control the name of the images imported from MS Word, please let me know. I've searched and Googled for hours and can't find a way to control the image file names.
Thanks in advance,
Shellie

I was hoping that this would be fixed in the 10.8.2 upgrade but it has not. Anyone have any luck? Earlier today I was trying to write a paper and navigating between 10 pdfs was a nightmare without being able to hover my mouse for the titles like I used to.

Importing Word Documents to RoboHelp 7 HTML

Hi,
We are using RoboHelp 7 HTML for our project requirements.
The approach we adopted is as follows -
1.) Develop content in MS Word 2003 with proper formatting
including the styles defined for tables, fonts, paragraphs, various
levels of headings etc. We will have high number of word documents
which need to be reviewed by the SMEs before putting them in
RoboHelp.
2.) Copy the content to RoboHelp. We are using the File >
Import > Word Document. We find the following issues in the word
documents thus imported -
a.) Formatting errors like the font of the numbered list is
not consistent. The numbers have a different font while the ontent
has a different font.
b.) The content in Tables is also not properly indented. It
touches the borders.
c.) Foreign characters are being introduced wherever
double-quotes are used. Eg: ”r;Other” (it should have
been "Other")
How do we address the above-listed issues? How do we get the
same output in RoboHelp as can be seen in the formatted word
document? Do you suggest any better alternative?
Thanks & Regards,
Anil

1] Yes. Non-RH users develop the content.
2a & 2b] What I have noticed is that the numbers appear
in Times New Roman while the content appears in Arial after
importing. As mentioned, we have lot of documentation (many word
documents). So each word doc I import, a CSS gets generated and
editing them itself is a herculean task. Is there any work around
this so that we can gain time and carry out the import smoothly?
2c] Could not find the patch in your website. One of your
posts says that it is Item 21. But cannot find any downloadable
link.
As suggested I tried reading the article in Printed
Documentation. But really didn't know which one you were referring
to.
Regards,
Anil

Importing Word with indents & italics to Indesign

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