Link/RE-link to word docs with form fields?

Trying something new, and when I took the InDesign 2 day class the instructor was not very familiar with linking to word docs, she just never used the feature.
So, I have multiple contributors who will onlly work in word. I am trying to set up a template/form for them to fill in that I can link to my .indt.
I have the styles set up and matching, and I'm looking for a way that I can lock everything but the areas where they need to fill in information. My plan is to do this by making a form in Word with text fields. Will this transfer over to the InDesign file when I relink? If not what is an alternative solution using Word with out having to copy and past all the time ?

Ohhh k.
OK Yes this is possible.
I do mean for it to link, the content is dynamic I need the technical people to be able to edit content before I get it. The point is to have multiple contributors working in word (absolutely must be word), creating new content that can be fed into indesign relatively automatically while preserving the InDesigns styles applied to certain text frames.
It does need to link back to get content updates so I have this option turned on in the general preferences to allow this.
The word documet is set up, as follows:
Form fields are created, along with their respective titles or headings. A style/structure element is applied. The style doesn't have to match what is in indesign but it is helpful.
Click the text box and got to "Place"
Select the document and select the "Show Import Options"
Under import options select "Preserve Styles and formatting..." Then Select the "Customize Style Import" radial and click style mapping. I tried doesn't this with the Automatic Import and it didn't work properly, custom mapping will identify the right information to style while overiding the actual style information from Word and instead uses the InDesign Style.
So... not necessarily a job for InCopy, though I realize that would be better, working in for a Microsoft Partner Network Gold Certified Partner, it would be impossible to get everyone to switch over to InCopy.

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Since the issue only occurs to Word for Mac, I'm not familiar with the mechanism how it opens a file, we mainly supports Office for Windows in this forum. Please post the question in Office for Mac forum for further assistance:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac
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It's recommended to download and install
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I'm having trouble building a Workflow to open and save Word docs with links.
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click here to open this script in your editor<pre style="font-family: 'Monaco', 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; overflow:auto; color: #222; background: #DDD; padding: 0.2em; font-size: 10px; width:400px">on run {input, parameters}
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-Network response times are slightly greater on 100mb LAN
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LOCAL DRIVE RESPONSE TIMES TO OPEN THE WORD DOC in Docx format:
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2. Open the Word Doc from Word with Excel open & workbook closed - 33 seconds (Excel appears to be accessed once per link)
3. Open the Word Doc from Word with the linked workbook already open - 7 seconds (Excel appears to be accessed once per link)
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It is a known bug and one for which AFAIK, there has been no fix. The only way that I could get around it in a particular application was to do something like save the linked information as document variables and then on opening the document recreate
all the information. My memory on exactly what I did is a bit hazy, but I can go back and check if you are interested.
-- Hope this helps.
Doug Robbins - Word MVP,
dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org
Posted via the Community Bridge
"galmcrantz" wrote in message news:[email protected]...
Is this a bug or is there a config setting that can prevent Word from needlessly opening Excel repeatedly (upon initial open of a DOCX Word doc) when pre-existing links should NOT be updated. The behavior is good using 2003 formats (DOC & XLS), but varies
significantly (~100:1 range in performance) depending on the test scenario (see below) using DOCX with XLSX.
We can't move our environment to the new XML formats until we can find a fix. We were led to believe Microsoft knew this to be a bug in Office 2007, but it has NOT been corrected in Office 2010. Omitting a detailed explanation for why we need to do this,
here's our test scenarios:
-Currently testing Office 2010 Pro Trial version on WIN XP SP3. (We have found similar results using Office 2007 with Win7 or XP).
-Word Option Deselected/DISABLED: "Update Automatic Links at Open"
-The Word Doc contains 100 linked Excel tables and is 130K in size (DOCX).
-Each link points to the same 10x10 cell range in one Excel Workbook located in same directory as the Word Doc, although other tests using separate directories produced similar results.
-The Excel Links were inserted into Word via Paste Special/Paste Link/MS Excel Worksheet Object.
-The workbook (XLSX) is 15K in size.
-All Links are set for "Manual" update, our testing showed no difference if links are set to "Auto".
-Again, Word is set to NOT update Automatic links when the document is opened.
-Results shown below are for local hard drive test.
-Network response times are slightly greater on 100mb LAN
-Word is completely restarted prior to each test to make sure there's no application caching involved.
LOCAL DRIVE RESPONSE TIMES TO OPEN THE WORD DOC in Docx format:
1. Open the Word Doc from Word with Excel closed - 175 seconds (Excel appears to be opened and closed once per link)
2. Open the Word Doc from Word with Excel open & workbook closed - 33 seconds (Excel appears to be accessed once per link)
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4. Rename Excel XLSX workbook so that Word can't find it. Then open Doc the from Word. 1-2 seconds (Excel does not appear to be invoked)
5. Repeat ALL of the above scenarios 1-4 using DOC and XLS files. These files are created with "Save AS" option based on original test files and then re-pasting the links. 1-2 seconds to open the Word Doc (Excel does not appear to be invoked)
Summary
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Testing with DOC/XLS formats gives good performance across all scenarios.
Doug Robbins - Word MVP dkr[atsymbol]mvps[dot]org

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Link/RE-link to word docs with form fields?

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