6 Replies Latest reply: Dec 3, 2009 5:31 PM by mattaca RSS

    Roundtripping text between InCopy and Word?

    mattaca Community Member

      I posted this on the InDesign forum, but I thought it might also belong here, as InCopy is involved.

       

      Our company does a lot of repurposing. We pickup recipes from a magazine and publish them in a book, or vice-versa. Our current system of picking up this content is inefficient and requires the text to be restyled every time it gets picked up. We're trying to implement a workflow that will retain the styling and eliminate duplication, but I'm encountering a couple problems:

       

      1) When pasting text from InDesign (or InCopy) into Word, it retains the styles UNLESS those styles are pre-defined in Word. For example, if the Word template has a pre-defined style called Recipe - head and you paste text that has that style, the text will no longer have that style applied after pasting; it will be set to Normal.

       

      2) I can use InCopy to pickup the text and then export to RTF, but the text comes into Word with all the formatting applied (sizes, fonts, colors, etc.). This makes it very hard for the editors to read when they're reviewing the copy and making changes.

       

      So my questions are these:

       

      1) Is there a way to map styles from InDesign to Word? I'd like to set up the Word doc to have all the styles names without the formatting so it's easier to read. OR,

       

      2) Is there a way to strip out all text formatting EXCEPT the style names themselves? We want it to retain the style names so we can map them to the InDesign styles when we import the text.

       

      If anyone has dealt with these issues, I would really appreciate the help. My searching thus far has yielded little in the way of results.

       

      Thanks in advance,
      Matthew

        • 1. Re: Roundtripping text between InCopy and Word?
          BobLevine CommunityMVP

          Answered in the InDesign forum.

           

          Bob

          • 2. Re: Roundtripping text between InCopy and Word?
            mattaca Community Member

            Thanks for your reply, Bob, but my question remains unanswered. Anyone else have experience with this?

            • 3. Re: Roundtripping text between InCopy and Word?
              AnneMarie Concepcion CommunityMVP

              Interesting ... I didn't know that Word punts and assigns the Normal style when there's an incoming style name conflict! That's not very nice. ;-)

               

              It is likely possible to script your second choice (strip all formatting attributes but retain style names on export).  You might try asking on either the ID or IC scripting forums, or contact a scripter directly for a quote (companies like in-tools.com, dtptools.com, rorohiko.com often do custom scripts or plugins for people ... just use their contact form).

               

              In the meantime you could spend about what ... 30 minutes? ... in creating a "strip formatting" InDesign and/or InCopy template. The template doc would have all the same exact style names as the working doc, but no special formatting. Be sure to base them all on No Style. Or you might want to retain "bold" for headlines or something.

               

              Then you could just export a story out of IC/ID to RTF and place that in the "cleansing" ID/IC template. When you do that, ID/IC styles trump incoming style definitions by default, so all special formatting is removed but style names are retained. Then re-export out of there to RTF again and send it on to your Word users.

               

              AM

              • 4. Re: Roundtripping text between InCopy and Word?
                mattaca Community Member

                Thanks, AnneMarie! Not especially elegant, but that might be the best way.

                 

                Honored to have you comment on my post.

                • 5. Re: Roundtripping text between InCopy and Word?
                  mattaca Community Member

                  Thanks, AnneMarie! Not especially elegant, but that might be the best way.

                   

                  Honored to have you comment on my post.

                  • 6. Re: Roundtripping text between InCopy and Word?
                    mattaca Community Member

                    Just to catch you up, 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. By inserting the file (but not as a link), the style names were retained but the formatting matched the Word file. This allowed me to later pull the text back into InDesign and map the styles to have them automatically formatted. I found this to be the simplest method, as it didn't require exporting the file from InDesign twice to get it to look right.


                    Hope this helps someone else who has repurposing needs in the future.