Losing Clickable Links and References When Importing from Word to InDesign

Question

Please help!

Placing Word with lots of interactivity is not working, bookmarks, references clickability gets lost.

Hyperlinks to external sources import ok and work as clickable when exported to pdf.

Tried different docX, doc, rtf, with no luck, running latest InDesign.

Bookmarks import, but are no longer clickable > InDesign uses text anchors, not bookmarks as clickable links to text inside document.

So in pdf i get clickable bookmarks to sidepanel,
but can not create text links to bookmarks - or the orginal linking does not import.

Target:

Boomark: Dictionary explanation of "word" (page 6)

Link:

...text body has the word here <link to bookmark>"word" <link>(page 100)

Also references links to document are not working:

Link:

"Said something" <link>(Someone 2022)<link> on page 1.

Target:

References (page 300)

<target>Someone 2022 <target>

James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted Answer

Pelasin tell More about the plugins?

From Word i can create pdf that works just fine.

I have not used it, but WordsFlow is a highly recommended plugin/convertor that all but merges Word and InDesign documents. It is a subscription tool from Em Software, and is a bit on the costly side if you don't do a lot of Word/InDesign work. But it may be a solution for you.

Word can export its own structure to PDF quite well, just as InDesign can export nearly any document or interactive feature to PDF without problems. That doesn't have much to do with how one document format converts or imports into the other, though — much of the problem you're experiencing is because Word has a different doc structure and link methods that have to be converted or remapped for InDesign. So you can do the direct export to PDF from either, but Word to ID to PDF is not an equivalent process.

Mike Witherell · Answer

You seem to be describing an InDesign feature called cross-references.

InDesign supports existing hyperlinks in a Word docx.

InDesign generates bookmarks from the ToC generator and there is also a bookmarks panel where you can build bookmarks manually, but does not import bookmarks.

Notice when you place a docx with Show Import Options turned ON that bookmarks is not listed there.

Bookmarks in Acrobat are always in its side pane.

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