7 Replies Latest reply: Feb 19, 2009 2:33 PM by Joel Cherney RSS

    Best Practices for Placing Microsoft Word (doc or docx) Files?

    octechwriter Community Member
      What is the best way to place Word files into InDesign CS3?

      Every time I place a Word file into InDesign, ID applies unwanted character styles and paragraph overrides to all of my text. For example, if I place a Word document with "Pal-Body" as the paragraph style, ID places the text with the *character* style "Pal-Bold" applied to all of the text, and ID applies an override to all of the paragraphs to remove the bold.

      Essentially, the text almost looks correct since the paragraph override undoes the bold caused by the unwanted character style. But "almost correct" is not good enough, so I have to manually remove the override, remove the character styles, and reapply any character styles to the text that are supposed to be there.

      This happens regardless of whether I select "Use InDesign Style Definition" or map the styles from Word to InDesign.

      By the way, my styles in Word are exactly the same as InDesign. I saved my InDesign template as an RTF file, and then saved that as a DOT Word Template.

      Also, I didn't seem to have this problem with InDesign CS2.

      What is going on and how do I fix it?
        • 1. Re: Best Practices for Placing Microsoft Word (doc or docx) Files?
          Michael Gianino Community Member
          A few questions

          It sounds like you are making your styles in Word. Do you already have styles in InDesign that have the same names as those in the Word file?

          If yes, did you create them in ID first, or have they come in via an earlier placement of Word text?

          In your Word file, is Pal-Bold being used? In other words, is the paragraph style Pal-Body, with some characters using a Pal-Bold character style (and when it gets to ID, the whole thing is plain with no bold)?

          >I saved my InDesign template as an RTF file

          Does that mean you exported some text from ID as RTF (as far as I know, you can't
          i save
          an ID file as RTF).

          >and then saved that as a DOT Word Template.

          So you open the exported ID text (RTF) in Word and save as a Word template? Why? I thought you were trying to get text
          i into
          ID
          i from
          Word.

          Also, when you place a Word file into ID, is it .doc, or .rtf?
          • 2. Re: Best Practices for Placing Microsoft Word (doc or docx) Files?
            Joel Cherney Community Member
            He's round-tripping through Word. I use a very similar sort of workflow with my translators. I open up my client's ID file, fix the styling (ugh), export an RTF, and ask my translators to respect the styling. When they return RTFs, I go and clean up the styles (about one fifth as much "ugh" as the initial styling work in ID), place the doc, and remove overrides. It works like a charm 80% of the time. Michael #1 is doing pretty much the same thing: making styles
            i in ID,
            exporting to RTF, doing text entry in Word, and then importing the final text back into ID.

            Hey Michael #1, could you take a look at one of your Word/RTF files and tell us if the list of "Formatting in use" in your Styles sidebar in Word actually matches your ID template? Perfectly? If there are any differences, then that could be the cause. Usually, I open up my translator's RTFs and replace local character formatting with character styles. That cleans up about half of my remaining 20% of non-charmed RTF files.
            • 3. Re: Best Practices for Placing Microsoft Word (doc or docx) Files?
              Community Member
              I have all my styles I want setup in ID.

              when I get word files I open them in text edit and paste them in ID using a script.
              • 4. Re: Best Practices for Placing Microsoft Word (doc or docx) Files?
                Joel Cherney Community Member
                Buko pastes?!?!?

                Okay, I guess that using a script to paste raw text is one way to strip styles without worrying about importing text. It wouldn't work for me, I think. I bet you never have to be concerned with sentence/paragraph counts that don't match, though. It sounds like a giant step backwards to me, but that's only because pasting in a para at a time was one of the only ways to get Pagemaker to play nice with non-Latin scripts.
                • 5. Re: Best Practices for Placing Microsoft Word (doc or docx) Files?
                  octechwriter Community Member
                  Stripping the styles out won't work for me either. The idea is to map the styles one-to-one from Word to ID. I would be interested in an explanation about what Buko's script does or how it works.

                  Joel, the Available Styles in the Word doc are exactly the same as the styles in the ID file, except for Word's requisite "Normal" and "Normal (Web)" styles.

                  Here's what I've discovered since my original post. InDesign is applying the "Pal-Bold" style to all of the imported text because I had (unbeknown to me) that character style selected when I placed the text. How stupid is that? Why on Earth would I want to apply a character format to already-formatted text when I import it? Is there a way to disable this (ahem) feature?

                  Regardless, ID still applies paragraph overrides for all of the imported text. Very frustrating.
                  • 6. Re: Best Practices for Placing Microsoft Word (doc or docx) Files?
                    Community Member
                    the script is in this thread.

                    I paste full documents. If the styles are mapped out and are identical in both apps you shouldn't have a problem.

                    I also use the script to repurpose the text from in the document. like pasting body text into a pull quote.
                    • 7. Re: Best Practices for Placing Microsoft Word (doc or docx) Files?
                      Joel Cherney Community Member
                      There are a bunch of reasons why you might get paragraph overrides on imported text. In my case, it's because Word appends styling information for all complex & Asian text to my styles exported from ID. When I place the revised (or translated) RTF, I get paragraph overrides. I just clear 'em all at once. It almost always snaps back to the specs I set in my original ID doc.

                      Every once in a while, I'll get some Normal or some auto-named Word style gibberish in my ID doc; it's usually faster to go and fix the styling in Word and re-import than it is to try to fix it in ID.

                      What happens when you select all text and clear all overrides? If you don't get what you want, then probably new style info is being auto-generated while you work in Word. To test this: Export your RTF, and then place it again without opening it up in Word. If you don't find any paragraph overrides when you do this, then you can assume that the way you're working in Word is causing this. When I roundtrip through Word in this way, I always examine my styling before saving and placing, and there's always something to fix.

                      Also, you don't want "Available Styles" you want "Formatting in use." It's a dropdown at the bottom of the sidebar in Word. That will hide "Normal," if that style does not appear in your doc.