How to convert a microsoft word into an illustrator file

[vesterindustrainingcenter]

Hello I do wonder how can I convert a word document into an illustrator file in order to improve the design and layout of it.

Thank you so much

[Abambo]

Non, il faut le refaire. Si c'est plus qu'une page, il serait plus utile d'utiliser Indesign!

[Jeff Witchel, ACI]

Hi vesterindustrainingcenter,

Abambo is right!

You said the magic word, "layout." If you even think of calling it a layout, do it in InDesign.

You can bring the text into InDesign with File > Place. But the actual design should be done in InDesign.

I know someone will suggest saving your Word document as a PDF and then opening in in Illustrator. This is a bad idea! Illustrator in NOT a PDF editor.

[Abambo]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Jeff+Witchel%2C+ACI  wrote

I know someone will suggest saving your Word document as a PDF and then opening in in Illustrator. This is a bad idea! Illustrator in NOT a PDF editor.

Editing a PDF in Illustrator is kind of a last resort rescue effort if all other options fail. I've done that quite a lot on a multitude of documents, but the PDF is, very often a mess of unrelated data from the Illustrator point of view.

Generally, PDFs should be considered as finished documents that do not need further editing. If further editing is necessary, use the source file and create a new PDF.

When I don't have the time to redo Word or PowerPoint graphics , I clean them up as much as possible and save to PDF. A PDF file can be placed into Indesign like an Illustrator graphic. When placing an Illustrator file in Indesign, you really place the PDF part of that Illustrator. Indesign does not understand the Illustrator structure, but knows where to find the PDF part of the file.

[Jeff Witchel, ACI]

What I always tell my students is, while PDFs made from other applications may be "talking" the Postscript language, this Postscript could be a totally different dialect. It takes different code to describe totally different features, some of which Illustrator may not understand at all.

[Test Screen Name]

Make a new layout in InDesign and copy/paste the text in place. Remake and place the graphics.

[Abambo]

Une astuce pour facilement accéder aux photos d'un document Word, si le fichiers d'origine ne sont pas accessible:

les documents DOCX sont essentiellement une collection de documents imbriquée dans un document ZIP.Il suffit donc de faire un "UNZIP" du fichier DOCX pour accéder à cette structure. Les photos sont bien sûre nommée image1.jpg¦.png etc,

Ceci dit: Il est normalement plus avantageux d'utiliser tout simplement les photos d'origine. En principe, la réponse que je reçois est du style: "Je ne les ait plus..."

[Test Screen Name]

Well... PDFs don't actually contain PostScript at all... PDF is its own language. Still, it's hard to find a good analogy, I tried.

[Abambo]

One could point to the official Adobe document to the PDF reference (page vii): PDF Reference and Adobe Extensions to the PDF Specification | Adobe Developer Connection :

[jane-e]

If it's a page or so, it's okay to choose File > Place and bring it into Illustrator.

The problem with Illustrator for longer documents is it does not have headers, footers, pages, page numbering, anchored graphics, TOC, index, cross reference, and so many other things you expect in a page layout program such as InDesign (or even Microsoft Word).

How long is your document?

[jane-e]

vesterindustrainingcenter  wrote

Hello I do wonder how can I convert a word document into an illustrator file in order to improve the design and layout of it.

In spite of this conversation morphing into a discussion on PDFs, vesterindustrainingcenter​, your question was about Word and Illustrator. You did not ask about PDFs, afaik. Was that answered or do you still have questions?

[Om Nath Jha]

Hi vesterindustrainingcenter,

Please update the thread and mark the answer which helped you get the workflow. Please feel free to let us know if you have any other query?

Regards,

Om