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M
mmfzd
Participant
November 8, 2022
Answered

Pasting Word file into InDesign

  • November 8, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 1507 views

1. I have composed my bilingual English-Urdu dictionary in Microsoft Word.

1. It is in single-column table.

2. English font is Garamond  size 11 and Urdu font is Nafees Web Naskh size 11.

3. Page width 6 inch, length 8.5 inch.

4. Header:  page nos. aligned left and right. Caption in the centre. No footer.

4. Chapter headings A to Z in bold.

5. I want to remove table.

6. I want to retain formatting (bold and italics).

5. Approximate no of typed pages 1000. Print version.

Kindly advise the best course to paste the Word file into InDesign frame.

 

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

The Word program is not meant for DTP. I regret that I am not trained to
use InDesign. As it is, my work in Word suffers from very many defects.
Hope for the best outcome.

Mahmood M
Aligarh, India
[Personal contact information removed]


The suggestion to finish the book to page layout in Word is a good one, especially if you are more familiar with Word than with InDesign. Even just replicating what you have in Word will require learning a lot of ID features that are mapped and implemented differently.

 

For text-only books, Word can do a very acceptable page layout. I've reviewed and edited textbooks with very elaborate page design laid out in Word, and while I think it's completely the wrong tool for such complex layouts it can be, and is, done.

 

I am not sure you will gain much from importing your book to InDesign and then spending much time struggling to achieve what you should be able to achieve more easily right in Word.

 

2 replies

Robert at ID-Tasker
Robert at ID-Tasker
Legend
November 8, 2022

Just import your Word file - or copy&paste from Word - then convert table to text.

 

M
mmfzdAuthor
Participant
November 8, 2022

Here's Chapter Aa of my bilingual dictionary. Kindly favour me with best instruction for the DTP man to import a Word file of 1000 pages into InDesign.

Thanks in advance.

James Gifford—NitroPress
James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
November 8, 2022

Yes, you should be able to just import the Word file as-is, but this is a good case to tend to all the details. As a start:

 

  1. Be sure the Word content is as 'clean' as possible, with absolutely no extra white-space characters. There should be no double returns, double spaces, tab+space, return+space, etc. Use search and replace to strip all instances of double whitespace before you import, and applying and adjusting styles and layout in InDesign will be much easier and more reliable.
  2. Be sure styles are used consistently throughout the Word document. There should be little or no spot formatting (select text, apply characteristics). This sloppy formatting will turn a large, complex file into a long series of sessions correcting layout faults.
  3. Replace spot bold and italic with Character styles in Word. Not commonly done, but for import to ID it will simplify things. Create Character styles for Bold and Italic, then use search and replace to replace spot bold and italic with the styles.
  4. Use the managed import feature, and map styles from Word to InDesign. You may have to repeat this step to get a clean import and mapping — that is, you might do an initial import, clean up the imported styles, then delete the content and re-import, matching the Word styles to the 'tweaked' ID ones. The sheer size of your book makes this step worth getting right, rather than doing a lot of cleanup and style application in InDesign later.
  5. It's almost certainly worth keeping each letter in a separate InDesign file and using the Book feature to combine them into the whole volume. This will simplify management of each chapter and get around common problems with very large files.

 

Hope that's a good start. Feel free to ask additional questions!

 

    Joel Cherney
    Community Expert
    Joel CherneyCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 8, 2022

    100% endorse what James has said here; it's  what I'd do. I would add that you say "paste the Word file into InDesign frame" in your first post, and "import" in your second post. If your DTP man is competent, he'll know to Place that document into an InDesign document. 

     

    Also, in keeping with James' comments regarding managing character styles for bold and italic in Word, I would wonder if it would make sense to Convert Table to Text in Word before attempting to Place the Word doc into ID. It's not a complicated table, so there most likely wouldn't be problems induced when placing the document. That's what I'd hope for, at any rate.

     

     

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