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Comments

No screen name said on Feb 4, 2008 at 6:24 PM :

is there some way to link a formatted Word document to an InDesign document, and then when the style changes in the Word doc, those changes are automatically updated in InDesign?

Bob - Adobe Writer said on Feb 5, 2008 at 10:15 AM :

Yes, but let's treat this as two separate questions: linking and updating styles.

First, linking. You can link files, but it's not a recommended workflow. To link the text file, open Type preferences and select the last option, "Create Links When Placing Text..." Then place the Word doc. When you edit the text in Word, you can update the link in the InDesign Links panel. However, this overrides any InDesign text formatting you've added, which is why it's not recommended.

Next, updating Word styles. When you place a file, make sure Show Import Options is selected. Under Import Styles Automatically, choose Redefine InDesign Styles (I'm not giving the complete steps). To update changes to Word styles, you can simply re-place the file again and choose Redefine InDesign Style.

You may want to consider using InCopy rather than Word.

No screen name said on Feb 10, 2008 at 7:35 AM :

First of all, thank you for addressing this question. I'm looking for more detail on the Word/RTF to InDesign workflow, specifically focused on styles. Does Adobe have any additional resources, beyond these help pages?

Bob - Adobe Writer said on Feb 11, 2008 at 3:17 PM :

Here are some good links:

http://www.adobepress.com/articles/article.asp?p=483800&seqNum=5

http://indesignsecrets.com/strip-the-crud-from-word-files-before-you-map-styles.php

http://www.creativepro.com/story/howto/25170.html

FelixSapiens said on Mar 6, 2008 at 8:09 AM :

I was sooo glad to see this function make it to InDesign CS3, but it doesen't
quite seem to do what it advertises. I would expect all formatting in the Word
doc to to overruled by the settings in the InDesign paragraphstyle, but that
doesn't happen. So I still get weird fonts and colors in my InDesign doc, and
things like the fontsize etc. are 'imported' from the word doc. .

Maybe I've overlooked something and you can enlighten me...

Thanks,

jmz

Bob - Adobe Writer said on Mar 7, 2008 at 3:05 PM :

First, make sure you have the same names for styles in the ID document that you have in the Word document. When importing, choose Use InDesign Style Definition for conflicting styles. To remove the extra formatting (which some people want), select the paragraphs with the extra formatting, right-click the style in the styles panel, and choose Apply [Style], Clear Character Styles.

No screen name said on Apr 17, 2008 at 3:06 PM :

Since switching to InDesign CS3, some Word documents aren't importing for
me as they did in CS2. The Word formatting is the same, the InDesign styles
are the same, but I'm getting more artifacts from the Word documents: Arial
fonts, wrong font sizes, etc. We have to option-click on character styles to
clear the overrides now, where we didn't have to in CS2.

Any ideas on why this is happening?

Winky44 said on Jul 2, 2008 at 2:19 AM :

I have a similar problem with importing styles from Word to InDesign.

I've set up a Word template on my PC with a list of styles, all based on Normal, all unformatted. The default font is Times New Roman. I copy Word documents into this template so that I can apply the style names I want.

When importing to ID on a Mac, usually the document comes in unformatted and our designer is able to apply the styles she chooses to the style names showing on the ID palette.

But sometimes, when I copy the Word document into the template, the 'Normal' style takes on a different default (e.g. Trebuchet or Calibri). This default is then carried over to the ID document and the designer has to override all the styles to apply her chosen typeface. All deliberate style formatting, of course, then disappears and has to be reapplied--very annoying!

Why does this happen sometimes but not always? Is it perhaps something to do with the way the original author of the document has formatted the text?