9 Replies Latest reply: Aug 31, 2010 1:43 PM by Willyv55 RSS

    Is clean Word import actually possible?

    Willyv55 Community Member

      Using Word 2007 and InDesign CS4 I wonder if it is actually possible to achieve what we'd like to do.

       

      I'm an experienced Word developer and an inexperienced InDesign user. I'm developing an advanced Word template for a magazine with the following purpose:

       

      • to make writing easier for the writing staff (using Word)
      • to make production easier for the production staff (using InDesign)
      • to ensure that documents delivered to the production department are as error-free as possible (in all areas)

       

      The writing staff just needs a pleasant writing environment. There's no need for their documents to look anything like they would in print. This means they can do with a pleasant screen font and pleasant and effective ways of distinguishing between different titles, sections and other typographical elements in Word. In other words, there is no need for a connection between the typography in the Word documents and the typography in print - other than styles.

       

      What we'd like to do is:

       

      • use exactly the same paragraph and character style names in Word and in InDesign
      • have InDesign ignore any Word formatting and just use style names for formatting decisions

       

      The idea is that InDesign (in our case) shouldn't need anything else from Word than text marked with style names. When a Word document delivers a piece of text marked as style X, InDesign knows how to format style X. There's no need to consider what Word did with it, other than the name of the paragraph or character style.

       

      Is this at all possible? It seems like a very natural thing to ask for but impossible to actually achieve.

       

      I've tried importing Word documents with several different import options, including saving the document under a new name or as an RTF before placing it. Neither 'Import Styles automatically' or using 'Style Mapping' works.

       

      Being the Word developer I'm able to deliver a technically perfect and quality assured Word document to InDesign, ensuring that only legal style names are used. But InDesign doesn't seem to know what to do with it...

       

      Again, I'm an inexperienced InDesign user so I hope I'm wrong. On the other hand there seem to be lots of problems in this area. Even a simple test where I defined three paragraph and two character styles in InDesign and then used the exact same styles in a simple Word document doesn't import correctly. I could make these documents available for download if anybody would like to play with them.

       

      I'd be grateful for any input!

        • 1. Re: Is clean Word import actually possible?
          [Jongware] Community Member
          Even a simple test where I defined three paragraph and two character styles in InDesign and then used the exact same styles in a simple Word document doesn't import correctly.

           

          The styles ought to come in with the correct names, but maybe ID's formatting of the same styles got overridden by the 'local' Word definition.

          Click in one of the paragraphs in Indesign that you imported this way, and see if the paragraph style has a '+' appended to its name. If so, the actual formatting is overridden -- hold down Alt and select the style again to clear all overrides. (Alternatively, click the strikethrough Paragraph symbol at the bottom of the Paragraphs panel, or select "Clear overrides" from the Paragraph panel menu.)

           

          If this works: you can select all text and select "Clear overrides" to clear *all* imported text at once.

          • 2. Re: Is clean Word import actually possible?
            Willyv55 Community Member

            [Jongware] wrote:

             

            Click in one of the paragraphs in Indesign that you imported this way, and see if the paragraph style has a '+' appended to its name.

             

            The '+' depends on where I click in the paragraphs. In some places it appears and not in others. Clearing the overrides for a paragraph fixes the problem in one paragraph and not in the other.

             

            My heading style (applied to just one line of text) does not have a '+' but is still not formatted as defined by the InDesign style. And by the way, I'm using version 6.0.5 of CS4.

             

            (As a humorous side note InDesign is reporting all this as Style Conflicts. I wish it would see it as style matches instead and say "Hooray! I know this style and what do to with it!" :-))

            • 3. Re: Is clean Word import actually possible?
              [Jongware] Community Member

              That really sounds like you have the Word definitions redefine your InDesign styles ...

               

              WordImportOpts.png

              • 4. Re: Is clean Word import actually possible?
                P Spier CommunityMVP

                It's ESSENTIAL using this workflow that the ID document already have a style defined for every style name you are importing, and DO NOT BASE ANY STYLE IN ID ON [Basic Paragraph] to avoid to the greatest extent possible having local style overrides.

                 

                There's a sort of similar thread at http://forums.adobe.com/message/3090658#3090658 that might be of interest, but I haven't yet figuired out why that user is having character style overrides. I'm about to look at his files..

                 

                In any event, the testing I did yesterday indicates that ID should be redefining the style attributes, but for some reason leaves an override for hyphenation options (testing wasn't hugely extensive, so there may be other things, like justification settings, that might also be affected similarly). My feeling is that it would be safe after import, presuming all test is properly styled, to clear all overrides and be done with it.

                • 5. Re: Is clean Word import actually possible?
                  Willyv55 Community Member

                  Thanks to Jongware and you for both of your latest suggestions!

                   

                  After applying these my test documents now seem to be well on their way. My three paragraph styles now work correctly in ID, meaning the Word definitions are ignored and the ID definitions carried out.

                   

                  I also defined two character styles in ID. All I intend them to do is set the Font Style to Bold or Italic respectively. They are both based on [None] and no Font Family has been specified for either:

                   

                  ID1.gif

                   

                  They do set the font style correctly but change the font to Calibri, which is what I use in the Word document. In Word the two character styles are defined in the same manner, without specifying a font. They both work well in Word and don't change the underlying font there.

                   

                  After I select all text in ID and clear the overrides, everything actually looks correct. Maybe I'm too demanding here, but I'd like the character styles to work in ID as well, without having to clear any overrides. Do you think this could be achieved?

                  • 6. Re: Is clean Word import actually possible?
                    Joel Cherney Community Member

                    After I select all text in ID and clear the overrides, everything actually looks correct. Maybe I'm too demanding here, but I'd like the character styles to work in ID as well, without having to clear any overrides. Do you think this could be achieved?

                    My gut feeling is "no" but I'm not 100% certain. My argument is based on my most normal InDesign -> Word -> InDesign workflow, which runs like this:

                     

                    1) Make a perfectly styled document

                    2) Export RTF

                    3) Send it to a translator

                    4) Translator uses Trados, and format paints perfectly because he/she knows that I will be very displeased if the formatting is not completely perfect (Trados & other translation tools automate style application so that the user doesn't need to know anything about styles in Wordp)

                    5) Translator returns an RTF in which every single style, character or paragraph, is perfectly replicated.

                     

                    I test this - on short, heavily styled documents, I'll do a manual style-by-style examination. Some translators are always 100% perfect, but most translators have one or two small imperfections in their returned RTFs.

                     

                    6) I place the RTF. There are always a few overrides, even for the perfectly styled-within-an-inch-of-their-lives RTFs I get from tech translators who have been using Word and Trados for more then 15 years on a daily basis, and who can be said to be absolutely expert in both apps - as well as ID, Framemaker, et cetera. Not neophytes, in other words.


                    I mapped control-alt-shift-numenter to Clear All Overrides, and the keystrokes control-D to Place, control-A to Select All, and control-alt-shift-numenter to Clear All Overrides are completely baked in to muscle memory. Even with a perfectly styled document, one or two little things will get broken (e.g. the first Bold charstyle gets mapped from the beginning of its first appearance to the end of its second appearance, meaning that many paragraphs wind up having the Bold charstyle applied) so I will always alt-tab back and forth between the PDF delivered by the translator and the InDesign document I'm working on. I have not tried to figure out exactly why charstyles occasionaly go wonky on me - I just said to myself "That's what you get for having Word in your workflow, big man" and built some workarounds. I can see that x hours of work gets me to within 5% of complete perfection, but that the amount of effort to get any closer to 100% perfection is way out of step with how many of my hours it would save to be 1% closer to perfection.

                     

                    If you want immutable perfection in application of character styles, I'd suggest XML export/import. Then, since you're a VBA developer, you can roll your own "Word 2007 format -> well-tagged XML" conversion script, and then you can reliably expect your charstyles to be perfectly applied every time by flowing in XML instead of RTF.  Or, think about InCopy.

                    • 7. Re: Is clean Word import actually possible?
                      Joel Cherney Community Member

                      I forgot to mention a handy Word trick - can you get away with turning on the feature in Word that locks down the styles? So that the only input your Word users can use is the keyboard to enter text? That might get your returned Word files to be a bit cleaner.

                      • 8. Re: Is clean Word import actually possible?
                        P Spier CommunityMVP

                        That seems to be the same probel, and solution, that I found in the other thread I mentioned.

                        • 9. Re: Is clean Word import actually possible?
                          Willyv55 Community Member

                          Thanks for valuable experiences and input, Joel.

                           

                          It seems the answer to my initial question is 'No' and therefore I'm marking my question as answered now. On the other hand I feel this thread with contributions from Jongware, Peter Spier and yourself has taken me as far as I can come for now. I may consider going to XML at some point but the work involved may not be worth it. For the time being it's quite possible that the production people can live with getting rid of (hopefully) a few remaining overrides.

                           

                          Still, it's strange that Adobe after all those years hasn't been able to work out a good solution in this area. It's obvious that a lot of people are struggling with this. What I'd really like to see is a new import selection:

                           

                          • Preserve Style Names, Remove Formatting

                           

                          Anyway, thanks again to all of you!

                           

                          Willy