Pasting Text into PM7 from New Microsoft Word

Question

I recently got a brand new compyer, so it has the latest version of Word. I write ad copy all day long and have always typed the copy into Word (or pasted from our online catalog into Word), formatted it the way I need it, and then copied and pasted that into PM.
Now when I try it, the formatting doesn't come across properly. The margins, fonts, and/or spacing will be different. This has proven to be much quicker for me than to actualy "place" the text. I paste about 75+ ads a day into PM.
Any ideas?!
Thank you!

Answer 1

Firstly, PM7 is VERY old, and there's no way it's going to recognise files of the *.docx format. Word 2003 won't even do that without a converter.
Secondly, from the old PM FAQs:
Edited: 28-Oct-2004 at 03:07am
It is well known that copy/pasting Word docs directly into PM will cause problems, particularly when style names clash. You can only 'import' the text from a Word document - no graphics, no backgrounds.
To get the graphics from the Word document into PM:
If you have a graphic in a Word document you want to put into your PM doc, and depending on whether it is a vector (e.g. WMF) or raster (e.g. JPG) export it from Corel Draw as an EPS or TIFF respectively. This method will retain all the pixel data that was in the original graphic, where pasting into Photoshop/Illustrator or PM itself will not.
To get the text from the Word document:
1. Save it as a TXT file, then place it into PM. Unlink the TXT file from the PM doc via the Links Manager.
2. Save the text from Word as rich text format (.RTF) then use File>Place to get it into PM. Make sure you immediately delete the link to the Word doc in the Links Manager, otherwise problems next time you open the PM file as it will look for that RTF file - bad news if you have made changes to the text in PM.
Note: Saving in RTF or TXT formats strips out the Word styles. The former however retains all bolding and italicising, the latter does not.
3. Copy and paste the text into a brand new PM doc, highlight all the text and on the Styles palette, click on the [No Style] option. Then recopy the text and paste it into your existing PM doc and apply PMs styles. (Don't save the PM doc where you applied the [No Styles]). Remember, it is far better to apply styles using PM than to bring in Word styles.
4. When you are in the "Place" dialogue box, try checking "read tags." This will prevent the Word document from importing its own styles into your document.
-- With thanks to Lyn Eggleston and Phil Peterson
See also this page in the PageMaker Support KnowledgeBase: Error or Freeze When Placing a Microsoft Word File into PageMaker 6.5x or Later for Windows.
Iechyd da! John
20:10 11/06/2009 BST