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Participant
November 18, 2025
Question

Importing MS Word Documents to Indesign- how to avoid pitfalls

  • November 18, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 70 views

I am planning to edit a Journal which will comprise about 40 professional articles from 40 different authors.

 I have seen intructions sent out which are basically MS Word focussed.

But I know importing many articles from different authors into InDesign can be a nightmare.

Paragraph and Character Styles will be lost, Footnotes are not in the same character style, Quoyes are not indented and so on.

Therefore I plan to send them guidelines on working with MS Word. I suggest the following:

  1. I will create a MS Word template.
  2. I will remove all the styles.
  3. I will introduce custom styles like Heading, Sub Heading, Body, Quote, Author Name, Author Designation.
  4. The Authors should strictly follow these styles.

Will this make sense?

 

 

3 replies

BobLevine
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 18, 2025

If the authors are familiar with using Word, it will certainly help you get this project done quicker.

Community Expert
November 18, 2025

This makes sense and should keep post-import styling to a minimum. I work on similar projects and the one area that seems to be overlooked by the author is the use of character styles. 

RvdT
Inspiring
November 18, 2025

Yes.
When placing word documents (File > Place) make sure to check the 'Show Import Options' checkbox.

Then you can "map" word styles to InDesign paragraph styles.

Automatically even when the style names are the same.