Word to InDesign Becomes Unlinked

Hi @photogiftexpress:

Can we assume you are using Preferences > File Handling > Create Links When Placing Text and Spreadsheet Files to link the Word document? 

It's an awkward workflow, IMO. You will want to apply styles in Word, and then map those styles to the equivalent styles in InDesign. You can modify the style definitions in InDesign but must make all text edits, and assign additonal formatting in Word, and then update the link in InDesign.

If you edit content or assign different styles in InDesign it will all look fine. However, if you return to Word and edit, you'll see an alert in InDesign that indicates that the file is out-of-date, and updating will wipe out all of the InDesign edits. The same thing is happening when you rename a file and then update the link. 

If being able to maintain an up-to-date Word file is the goal here, I would definitely take a look at Worksflow from Em Software. It's a much easier way to work and it offers round-trip editing. You can edit in Word and InDesign picks up the changes. Or you can edit in InDesign and Word picks up the changes.

Otherwise, I just wouldn't link the Word docs.

~Barb

EDIT: My apologies if I repeated what was already said. Only @Peru Bob was on the thread when I started my answer.

Thank you for these answers! I did place the text (and usually only place from RFT), but somehow it still refers to the document as 'linked'. I guess I'll make sure to not change names from the file that contained the word doc. I did change back to the file names that I had saved previously and the problem disappeared.

But this has me wondering why when I placed the text InDesign shows it as linked. But at this point in the long game of the book I'm designing, it is a moot point. But I would like to know the difference between placing and how it linked for future books.

Again,

Thank You!

I've had some success where Word has the exact same named styles as InDesign.

It's a bit of work to add Styles to Word - but they can be mapped to InDesign styles and then the update is seamless enough. 

But usually I have received fully signed off Word docs that I use to design the layout and then it wouldn't be used again unless it was completely new content. 

Any edits to the document is then done through PDF annotations. 

I wouldn't be accepting a new Word doc for updates, hasn't really come up really. 

Maybe some more background into your workflow could add some insights for a way to manage your requirements. 

Linking to Word docs (as opposed to just placing their content in InDesign) is a fussy and not very useful option. Changes are not written to the Word file and any update/relink will replace the edited content in ID with the original (or at least current source) file's content.

Just place the Word doc, without the linking, and style away in ID. There's no good way to go backwards to Word unless you use something like the WordsFlow plugin, and then it's still best to have a very strong reason to maintain both file versions.

@photogiftexpress

I'm replying from my phone - what if you copy your text - contents of the whole Story - to a new document?

I've moved this from the Using the Community forum (which is the forum for issues using the forums) to the Account, InDesign forum so that proper help can be offered.

Scroll down here to see a list of the forums:
https://community.adobe.com/