Trouble with Text frames and Word

[duncanbarlowUSD]

Hi, all,

I'm using the latest InDesign and I'm having an issue I've never encountered before. I am importing a word document that contains a book of poetry. When I import the text and begin flowing it, it comes in but after a few pages the link shows as broken.

I've tried a few things:

1. checked for track changes

2. removed page breaks

3. changed the font before importing and then after importing

For the life of me, I don't know what I'm missing here but believe it's something I'll feel stupid about in a few.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

<< after a few pages the link shows as broken>>

What link is this?

Can you describe this in more detail?

[Barbara Ash]

Are you referring to a link within the Word document, like maybe a link to a web page? Or are you referring to a link to the Word document itself, which would show in the Links panel?

[Barb Binder]

Hi Duncan:

When I import the text and begin flowing it, it comes in but after a few pages the link shows as broken.

InDesign can "link" a story to the original Word file, so that if you update the file in Word, the InDesign story will update. This is turned on in Preferences. It's not a very common workflow in InDesign so I'm making a guess that you are trying to tell us  that the text is overset?

I would start by selecting the last visible word or sentence, and then choose Type > Edit in Story Editor. Be sure Type > Show Hidden Characters is turned on. What do you see in Story Editor after the last visible text? Any column or page break characters? Is it followed by a heading with Keep Options on? Showing us a screen shot of what you see will help us help you diagnose the problem.

~Barb

[duncanbarlowUSD · Accepted solution]

Thank you Everyone! I actually went through and found it was a strange conflict in the paragraph styles, which should have been my first place to look but I was a little brain dead by the end of the day. Because of the playful formatting of the poetry, I wanted to keep as much of the author's paragraph styles in-tact but that was causing things to go crazy.

As for the broken link, what I meant was that it looked like the photo below. Once I cleaned up the paragraph style sheets in InDesign, this problem was resolved.

[Barb Binder]

That's so interesting. I've never seen that particular icon before.

Anyway, glad you are back on track, and happy weekend to you.

~Barb