InDesign document for proofreading in Word?

Question

Hi,
Our office is producting a monthly newsletter of about 52 pages. So far, we have been doing it in Microsoft Word and this is working quite well. When the newsletter is finished, I email it to a proofreader who makes the necessary changes and returns it to me. All the changes are clearly visible and can be accepted or rejected with the help of the Reviewing Toolbar.
However, we are soon switching over to InDesign, and my question is: How can I convert the InDesign document into a format that can be reviewed in Word? Our proofreader (doing his work at home) does not have InDesign.
I would be gratefull for any suggestions and comments.
Irmgard Wesselbaum
(Melbourne, Australia)

Answer 1

This is a workflow issue.
Typos and other word-proceesing changes should be fixed PRIOR to placement of the story in InDesign so you aren't correcting dozens of those mistakes after layout is complete. Word files with changes that are waiting for acceptance or rejection are a very large source of trouble.
That's the theory, but here in the real world there are still usually a few errors that get by, so some changes are pretty inevitable. Since line endings are generally different in Word and ID, one of the most common changes I see is editing to add or lose a line for copy fit or to fix a "runt."  Many of us use PDF for proofing -- sending a PDF to the proofer that has been enabled for commenting in Adobe Reader. This works pretty well, though I find it helps if you can train the proofreader to use the highlighter tool in conjuction with whatever other tool they might be using to make changes.
ID also comes with a free year of the CS Live online service that is full of bells and whistles for commenting and other markup of your project. I don't use it, primarily because I don't want to get hooked on a service that I'll have to pay for to continue using only a few times a year, but you may feel differently.
Bottom line, I think is that you should contine to do the writing in Word, but don't attempt fancy Word formatting to make it "look like" your newsletter -- just type. ID is the program for layout. Send the Word file as usual for editing, Accept/reject changes, then place the file into ID. When layout is complete send a new PDF proof with commenting enabled with the understanding that YOU will need to make any new changes, and the types of changes should really be limited to layout issues (if possible) rather than wholesale re-writes. The same goes for images, by the way. If they need some sort of correction, that really should be done before they get to you for inclusion, but again, that isn't always what happens. Fortunately, ID's integration with Photoshop and Illustrator make it a snap to choose "edit original" to pop over to those apps, edit a linked asset, and go back to ID where the link will update automatically.
Do your writers use styles in Word? Do they even know what that means? Your life in ID will be much simpler, and the layout faster, if you get properly styled (meaning text is tagged with styles, not necessarily that those styles have the correct final formats) documents from your authors. That's seldom the case out here in the real world, but we can all wish. There are several free scripts floating around that will take a typical Word file that is 100% formatted using Normal and bold and italic buttons and will preserve the local changes, creating proper styles. You'll want to try these...