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L Gryfe
L Gryfe
Inspiring
November 2, 2023
Answered

InDesign imported extra content from MS Word doc that is not tracked changes.

  • November 2, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 817 views
I’ve never had this happen before. I imported a text from MS Word and I got all this extra content that is not the tracked changes. I can't for the life of me figure out where it came from and I don’t know how to get rid of it. I only noticed it by accident in one spot. It's a 45 page doc and I'd prefer not to have to go through it paragraph by paragraph to find the discrepancies. Any ideas what might be causing this? TIA.

 

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer James Gifford—NitroPress

Okay. I should have gone on to the next step. 🙂

 

Both Word and ID have a tendency to collect junk as files are edited and saved — this is why a simple Word report can bloat to a meg or more. In InDesign, you can purge that undo and other working data by doing the Save-As... some here recommend doing it at least once a day on any doc you're working on, just to clean out the dumpster. There's a more powerful purge, done by saving to IDML and then opening that and saving as a new INDD file, which will both purge junk and rebuild the structure, often fixing all kinds of little glitches.

 

For Word, Save-As only fixes some things. To clean out all the garbage, save as RTF, then open it and save again as DOCX. That should purge all the remnants of discarded changes, Undos, etc. and give you a clean import.

1 reply

James Gifford—NitroPress
James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
November 2, 2023

I would never import a Word doc without committing all changes, then doing a Save-As to create a reasonably clean, purged file. It doesn't take much corruption in a Word doc for garbage like hidden changes to sneak in.

 

That is, I'd expect nothing else trying to import a doc with uncommitted changes. Make a copy if need be, but clear that material, purge the doc and try again.

L Gryfe
L GryfeAuthor
Inspiring
November 2, 2023

James, all tracked changes have been accepted. There is no extraneous contant that is visible. This is the my problem.

James Gifford—NitroPress
James Gifford—NitroPressCorrect answer
Legend
November 2, 2023

Okay. I should have gone on to the next step. 🙂

 

Both Word and ID have a tendency to collect junk as files are edited and saved — this is why a simple Word report can bloat to a meg or more. In InDesign, you can purge that undo and other working data by doing the Save-As... some here recommend doing it at least once a day on any doc you're working on, just to clean out the dumpster. There's a more powerful purge, done by saving to IDML and then opening that and saving as a new INDD file, which will both purge junk and rebuild the structure, often fixing all kinds of little glitches.

 

For Word, Save-As only fixes some things. To clean out all the garbage, save as RTF, then open it and save again as DOCX. That should purge all the remnants of discarded changes, Undos, etc. and give you a clean import.

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