A

Anonymous

Question

Collaborative Editing

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
April 29, 2019
3 replies
317 views

Greetings!

We are about to take a big step in improving our workflow as a small publisher using InDesign for designing and typesetting our books. Previously, our team of editors and proofreaders worked from Word and then I pasted the text into InDesign. To avoid erroneous formatting from Word, I always pasted without formatting. But then I had to rebuild formatting (like Italics and paragraph breaks, etc.) which then meant another extra round of proofreading. After reading a lot about better options, I am at trying to choose between either linking our Word docs (either from a shared Dropbox folder or locally, once all the editing is finished) or trying to onboard the team of editors with InCopy (to either e-mail assignments or host everything live in Dropbox). It would save me countless hours of experimentation if other users could suggest what might be best for us.

If I can prevent bad Word formatting, and if it's possible to eventually flatten the linked text for archiving, then linking Word docs would be the simplest. If, however, other forum users have had lots of problems doing this, it might be better to learn and implement InCopy into our team.

Thanks!!

Warmly,

Jonathan

This topic has been closed for replies.

JonathanArias

Legend

I am a designer working for a publishing company. we have 6 editors. we got them training in indesign. works great. you need to start using GREP for auto formatting text, italics and so on. it will save hours when placing the copy from a word document, of when the editors do editing. they will love it how the text will auto format.

do that word do indesign integration Derek suggest, and look for patterns in your layouts to automate with GREP works great. our editors are super happy. It will be hard to get people to use INCOPY once they see how everybody can just work from indesign. Its more files and the incopy file has to live next to the indesign document and they can't be moved around drives or it causes issues.

cheers

BobLevine

Community Expert

I disagree vehemently on this. InCopy was built for this purpose.

Getting people to learn InDesign just for editing content and having to worry about who has what open is not a great workflow.

JonathanArias

Legend

the chief editor learned indesign and that is what she wanted all other editors to work from. Once an editor(s) learns indesign they will not go to incopy.

i have tried to talk them into incopy. they just don’t want to learn it since they feel incopy is just watered down indesign.

Derek Cross

Community Expert

There's a marvellous Lynda.com tutorial on collaborating with Word and InDesign which I think you'd find invaluable (you can get 30-days free access): Word and InDesign: Integration

Regarding workflow, I suggest you consider using the features of Word to finalise the copy (as much as you can) then Place the text in InDesign using InDesign's Microsoft Word Import Options facility. When the page(s) have been set up you can circulate the proofs as PDFs to your editorial team and they can use the new feature in InDesign CC2019 which offers the ability to import comments from the PDF into InDesign.

BobLevine

Community Expert

My vote would be for InCopy but I would advise against pasting Word docs. There are plenty of tools built into InDesign to allow you to place the file and maintain the formatting you need.

If you want to stick with Word, look into Wordsflow from Emsoftware but InCopy is a bargain at only $5/month.

A

Anonymous

Dear all,

Thanks for your helpful comments. Based on your experience, if you tell me that linking/importing Word docs (not copying-and-pasting) are often buggy or otherwise problematic, then I will take the time to learn about using InCopy and then teach the team. Otherwise, it seems that all the initial editing should be done in Word — since the editors and proofreaders are already very familiar with basic formatting in Word as well as Word's tracked edits functions — and then linked/imported just before final typesetting.

Also, is there a function to "flatten" linked "Word" docs so I can later archive the InDesign packages without the Word docs needing to remain?

Thanks!

Warmly,

Jonathan

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