Formatted text from Word 2016 is not always preserved in InDesign CC

[aspat39725597]

Hello,

I am facing the following problem:

When placing text in bold and italics from Word 2016, InDesign CC does not include ALL the formatting, even though the relevant preference is selected:

"Preferences > Clipboard Handling > When pasting text and tables from other applications > All information".

Some of the bold text is desplayed as regular in InDesign. This problem doesn’t occur when placing formatted text from Word 97-2003. How can I fix it using the current version of Word?

Thank you in advance!

[vladan saveljic · Accepted solution]

in this cases try to save the file as .doc or .rtf (not docx) and than place the file (file > place).

[Derek Cross]

You need to Place (not copy and paste) the Word file into your InDesign document. Press shift and the Microsoft Word Import Options dialogue box is available (see screen shot) and there you can choose to Preserve the (Word) Styles and Formatting. You can then subsequently replace the Word Styles with InDesign Paragraph and Character Styles. Ensure when you Place the Word file you have [Basic Paragraph] and [None] highlighted in InDesign paragraph and character styles.

[aspat39725597]

Thank you both for your response!

Although the Word 2016 - InDesign CC compatibilty problem with bold & italics still remains, my work can be done by saving the Word file as .doc (i.e., Word 97-2003) or .rtf and then placing it in InDesign CC. Now all the formatting is preserved!

[Derek Cross]

Direct formatting in Word is called Local formatting in InDesign. i.e. they are Character Styles.

Having Placed your Word 2016 document into InDesign CC (as I described in my earlier post) if you then select the text and run the preptext.jsx script (a free script that’s supplied with InDesign) it will convert your Word local formatting, such as bold, italic and underline, into proper InDesign Character styles, you can then delete the Word styles (the Word styles are indicated in the Character styles panel with a download icon – indicated in yellow marker in the attached screen shot) and you have perfectly formatted character styles!

[aspat39725597]

Dear Derek, thank you for this useful information!

[Jongware]

Yes, preptext.jsx is free ... but surely it's not included in the installation by now?

[Derek Cross]

Didn't you write these Jongware preptext.jsx, PerfectPrepText_Ask.jsx, and PerfectPrepText_Do.jsx ?

[Jongware]

Yes, no, and no (these last two are supplemental helpers and are written by Peter Kahrel). I was more wondering where your second half came from:

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Derek+Cross  wrote

a free script that’s supplied with InDesign

[Derek Cross]

Oh maybe I got that wrong (about it being supplied with InDesign).