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1. Re: Roundtripping text between Indesign and Word?
BobLevine Nov 25, 2009 8:13 AM (in response to mattaca)Roundtripping with Word is not an idea situation at all and copy/paste just makes it worse.
Try to export your text as RTF instead and see if that helps, but InCopy would be a better solution.
Bob
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2. Re: Roundtripping text between Indesign and Word?
mattaca Nov 25, 2009 8:26 AM (in response to BobLevine)We plan to use InCopy in house, but we also have to send files to the copyeditor, proofreader, etc., so we need the option to put it in Word. I did try exporting to RTF, but like I said, it retains all the text formatting. I'm wondering if there's a way to just retain the applied style names, but not the styling. Thanks, though.
Anyone else dealt with this?
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3. Re: Roundtripping text between Indesign and Word?
BobLevine Nov 25, 2009 8:29 AM (in response to mattaca)Why's that?
The remote InCopy workflow works very very well and a license for InCopy is certainly cheap enough when you consider how much time it saves.
Bob
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4. Re: Roundtripping text between Indesign and Word?
mattaca Nov 25, 2009 9:22 AM (in response to BobLevine)If it were up to me, we would. But our editors are resistant to requiring the copyeditor and proofreader to use software they're not familiar with. Don't ask, that's just how it is. For this reason, I'm set on finding a solution using Word. Can you help along those lines?
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5. Re: Roundtripping text between Indesign and Word?
BobLevine Nov 25, 2009 10:20 AM (in response to mattaca)You can try exporting to InDesign tagged text.
The other alternative is a commentable PDFs.
Bob
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6. Re: Roundtripping text between Indesign and Word?
Joel Cherney Nov 25, 2009 10:46 AM (in response to mattaca)Because I have very few translators who can work in ID, I use a workflow like this all the time. If you're handy with VBA, you can write a script that
will go through all of the styles in your exported RTF and replace the formatting in the InDesign styles with something much simpler. For example, I'll change all serif styles to TNR and all sans styles to Arial, because I can assume that my less technically competent translators who panic when asked to install a font would at least have those two fonts installed. I can change the paragraph indents and spacing to something much simpler than what is in the ID doc with a single click. When I place that translated RTF back into InDesign, I can replace the translator's, ah, "formatting choices" with the original style definitions, so I can simply Clear Overrides and get something pretty close to the original formatting, only requiring minor cleanup.
If you're not handy with VBA, and yet expect to use Word as an integral part of your workflow, I suggest that you get busy studying.
Edit: Actually, tagged text is a pretty good idea, if you're willing to do some post-processing. The kind of editor who insists on unstyled text in Word is unlikely to be willing to edit tagged text in a raw text editor (or to use TagEditor or some other tool intended for manipulating tagged text).
Message was edited by: Joel Cherney
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7. Re: Roundtripping text between Indesign and Word?
RodneyA Nov 25, 2009 10:54 AM (in response to Joel Cherney)Couldn't you create a Word document that has the same style names as your Indesign style names, but defined with simpler formatting (Times, Arial, etc.)? Export from Indesign as rtf, then open the rtf file in Word, then import the alternate styles from the alternate styles document. When you bring the edited file back into Indesign, it should reassert its own style definitions, as long as the style names remain the same.
Mind you, I haven't actually tried this, but it seems worth a shot. Your experience of styles being renamed to "Normal" in Word worries me a bit. Word version 5 had an excellent implementation of styles, and it's gone seriously downhill ever since.
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8. Re: Roundtripping text between Indesign and Word?
BobLevine Nov 25, 2009 11:02 AM (in response to RodneyA)Don't blame the hammer, blame the carpenter.
Bob
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9. Re: Roundtripping text between Indesign and Word?
mattaca Nov 25, 2009 11:59 AM (in response to BobLevine)Or, blame the company that made the hammer if it's not constructed well enough to do something as simple as hitting nails.
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10. Re: Roundtripping text between Indesign and Word?
mattaca Nov 25, 2009 12:01 PM (in response to mattaca)Thanks, Joel and Rodney for those suggestions. I'll try importing more normal looking styles into my Word doc (I assume you can override?) and see if that helps. If it doesn't I'll get busy learning VBA. I'll let you know what I work out.
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11. Re: Roundtripping text between Indesign and Word?
BobLevine Nov 25, 2009 12:04 PM (in response to mattaca)Of course, but that's not true in this case. You're trying to use the back of a wrench instead of a hammer.
And the bottom line is this. If those editors can't handle this with a simple RTF export and just edit the text and return it then the argument against InCopy goes out the window...because apparently they don't know how to use Word, either.
Bob
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12. Re: Roundtripping text between Indesign and Word?
mattaca Dec 3, 2009 5:27 PM (in response to mattaca)Just to report to back, here is what I ended up doing. I created a Word document with styles that matched in name only—just the default formatting, and based them on No Style. I exported my InDesign document to an RTF file, then opened my blank Word document and chose "Insert File." I made sure I did place the file as a link and the style names were retained but the formatting matched the Word file. This allowed me to later pull the text back in to InDesign and map the styles to have them automatically formatted.
There IS an option in Word under Format > Style > Organizer that allows you to transfer styles from one document to another, but there are no presets and it always comes up with the default setup of exporting the styles. Changing that is kind of a pain, so I found the above solution to be the simplest method.
Hope this helps someone else who has repurposing needs in the future. -
13. Re: Roundtripping text between Indesign and Word?
mattaca Dec 3, 2009 5:32 PM (in response to mattaca)mattaca wrote:
I made sure I did place the file as a linkWhoops! That was supposed to read did NOT place the file as a link. Big difference.




