10 Replies Latest reply: Mar 27, 2013 1:20 AM by Nini Tjäder RSS

    Problems Placing Text from Word

    rigoliarts Community Member

      I'm placing text from a MS word doc into my master pages in InDesign and it only imports part of the text, the first 8 pages, and after many blank pages, I see the little red plus in the box in the lower right hand corner of the text box, but no matter how many times I continue the flow to the next column, the rest of the text will not appear. The MS doc is in fonts I don't have but I figured I could do a search and replace once the text flows in as there is a lot of bold, and italic formatting that I don't want to loose by copying and pasting from Word to InDesign. Anyone have any idea why this is happening or what I can do to flow in all 36 pages of text?

        • 1. Re: Problems Placing Text from Word
          Steve Werner CommunityMVP

          If you're doing what you're saying you're doing...namely placing that much text on your MASTER PAGES, that's the problem. You should place your Word text onto a DOCUMENT PAGE. You can hold down the Shift key to autoflow the remainder of the text, automatically creating new pages using the same master page.

           

          Master pages are the pages at the top of the Pages panel. Document pages are those below the double line.

          • 2. Re: Problems Placing Text from Word
            rigoliarts Community Member

            No, sorry for the confusion. I meant that I had set up a master page first, but I AM trying to place the text onto a document page and I have used the shift key to auto flow. Could it be something with the fonts or the word document?

            • 3. Re: Problems Placing Text from Word
              Nini Tjäder Community Member

              Absolutely can be something in the Word file itself. Check in the original file, in MS Word, the location from where it stops importing. Check it with hidden characters shown. Check if there is a some odd character or rule there or if the following paragraph has a rule saying to keep it on same page or braking to new section or something like that. There is plenty of stuff in Word files that can stop an import...

              • 4. Re: Problems Placing Text from Word
                P Spier CommunityMVP

                I often see Word files full of non-breaking spaces, too. It only takes turning off hyphenation one too many non-breaking spaces in a line to send the rest of the doc into overset. This is not unusual AT ALL when you recompose in ID, especially if the column width is different. A large inline image would do that, too.

                 

                In addition to looking at the file in Word, you could put the cursor at the last point you see text in ID and open the story editor to see what's beyond. If it isn't obvious (turn on non-printing characters so you can see non-breaking spaces), select the first two overset paragraphs and check the Keep options (might be set to keep all lines together and/or keep with next that hass keep all lines together and have too many lines to fit a page) or whether No Break is applied in the first overset line. Check hyphenation, as well.

                • 5. Re: Problems Placing Text from Word
                  BobLevine CommunityMVP

                  What version of InDesign?

                   

                  Bob

                  • 7. Re: Problems Placing Text from Word
                    rigoliarts Community Member

                    It was the hyphenation! Once I checked the hyphenation box, the rest of the text came in. Thank you all for your help.

                    • 8. Re: Problems Placing Text from Word
                      P Spier CommunityMVP

                      Well, if hyphenation solved the problem, it most likely means that there's a stretch of text with non-breaking spaces, or else one really long word (like a URL), and you should spend the time to figure out what the real problem was. Non-breaking spaces should really only be used to separate words that need to stay together ( I typically use them in proper names), and if you repalce the ones you don't need with ordinary spaces you may be able to turn off hyphenation again if you want to. If it's a long URL, a hyphen is ambiguous, and it's often better to add discretionary line breaks (under special characters) at appropriate break points.

                      • 9. Re: Problems Placing Text from Word
                        SimonJester753

                        OK, I'm having this problem and I have no idea what you people are talking about.

                         

                        Where exactly is this hypenation setting? In InDesign or Word? How do I access it and exactly what should it be set to?

                        • 10. Re: Problems Placing Text from Word
                          Nini Tjäder Community Member

                          If you are having the problem when placing the Word-document (I haven't read the entire thread, sorry) then the hyphenation rules are set in Ms Word. You can however change that in InDesign itself. U turn on Language (desired language in the Character palette to get the correct rules. U then turn on Hyphenate in the Paragraph palette. If you want further control use the drop down menu in the Paragraph palette to set rules for how the hyohenation should behave. Other hyphenation problems can be found in the Styles used. Those can come from either Word or InDesign. What the settings should be depends a lot on font and font size used and which kind of rules you want to be used (like how many charcter should there be before it hyohenates, where in a particular word should the word be hyphenated etc.).