Advice Needed: Importing a long Word Doc with messy styles

[wutbkk]

OS Catalina 10.15.7

version 16.4

Hi all,

I work for a non-profit who regularly assigns me to work for long publications (200+ pages). They would prepare Word documents containing footnotes, texts, figures, etc. that have been finalized internally and then send to me to layout in InDesign. In the past I would use InDesign Place function to generate content automatically, and the biggest pain point is always that the Word Document they have prepared for me don't follow consistent styles at all. For example, they might use the same styles for multiple elements (like graph titles, captions, and heading), and they might just manually use bold function in Word to indicate a heading, or the way they inconsistently style the footnote references make some of the footnotes disappear altogether when placed into InDesign. What is your recommendations? Is there any AI / scripts that can smartly sort out this issue, do you recommend just manually do formatting within the Word doc first before placing the file into ID, or any other advices?

Thank you.

[Eugene Tyson]

There's a prep text script. 

https://creativepro.com/perfectpreptext-a-smart-way-to-style-local-formatting/

Usually - it's bringing in the Word file to InDesign.

But typically I do this with a copy and paste from Word.

In your InDesign Preferences go to Clipboard Handling - and make sure it's set to retain the same styles.

Once you copy and paste from Word it should come into InDesign with the formatting as per the Word Styles.

Run the Prep Text script on the text which applies all the Bold, Italics, Superscript, Susbscripts etc and creates Character Styles for them.

I then turn on the Style Highlighter. https://www.tech4pub.com/2016/03/15/indesign-cc-tip-style-override-highlighter/

Which highlights any styles not conforming - which should be 90% of your copied in text. 

200+ pages isn't huge - for me anyway - might seem daunting. But take a chapter/section at a time and apply the InDesign styles per section/article or whatever way it's divided.

But the prep text will stop you accidentally overwriting the italics/bold etc when applying styles. 

https://creativepro.com/retaining-important-formatting-when-importing-word-documents/

The important thing is to go line by line and ensure the correct InDeisgn Formatting is assigned.

You can assign keyboard shortcuts to styles

https://www.adobepress.com/articles/article.asp?p=1873031

Or my favourite way is using the eyedropper tool.

But I'd definitely have the Style Override Highlighter turned on, I feel it really helps.

[wutbkk]

Dear Eugene,

thank you so much for the detailed reply. I am fiddling with the script now in order to learn it better; in the meanwhile, could I ask why you choose to Copy and Paste from Word Doc rather than using the Place function in ID? Place function to me saves a lot of time by auto-generating pages, even if the importing becomes messy.

[Eugene Tyson]

I find that not all the formatting comes in when placing it, sometimes some italics/bold etc doesn't carry over. 

It's my preference for my workflow. But might give you another option. than just placing.

There was one time I would get properly formated Word Files - however, it is rare. 

So mapping styles on import isn't always the best.

I tend to have the Word file open and copy over sections at a time - and go line by line to ensure the formatting matches.

But the Prep Text script works a treat. 

[wutbkk]

Thank you Eugene. I was under the impression that if you place the whole file then run script after it would be more efficient, but you make a good point about the place function itself failing to carry over some styles, thank you for the tip. 

[Scott Citron]

Welcome to the real world, wuts…

Unfortunately, people are lazy and resist spending time learning how to save time. Alas.

Ideally, writers would write in Word and apply paragraph styles to assign formatting. 

In the real world, nobody does any of this. Zero. Zip. Nada.

So, as the page designer, it becomes your problem to format all the text that comes in, before flowing it into your publication.

Much as training editors how to format text before sending it for composition would be a godsend, reality reminds us that designers must carry this burden.

[wutbkk]

The burden is upon us indeed Scott, thank you for sharing.

[Kasyan Servetsky]

Here is a script I wrote for my workflow.

Also, I want to mention that sometimes, when I place a Cyrillic text, I encounter weird problems: e.g. footnotes, formatting, glyphs, etc. are lost. In such cases, resaving the file in another format — Word 97 or RTF — often solves the problem. So, if you have non-English text in your file, you may want to play with these formats.

[Laubender]

Hi,

also see into this script by Marc Autret:

RichPaste | Copy and Paste with Minimal Formatting [UPDATE]
Marc Autret, April 06, 2016
https://www.indiscripts.com/post/2015/10/richpaste-copy-and-paste-with-minimal-formatting

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

One thing I find useful in my workflow is to create a "Raw" document and import my client's/writer's/etc messy Word files into that so I can clean them up before I bring it all into my main document. The main benefit is I don't end up with a Paragraph/Character Style list full of crappy Word styles that pollute my "good" document.

[Colin Flashman]

I'd use Kasyan's script that he featured in an earlier post.

Further down on the link that Kasyan provided are some other scripts that also work well too.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Not a solution, but a tip...

In Word for Windows, if you select all your text (Cntl-A) and type Cntl-spacebar, you will remove all formatting except for paragraph formatting. Manually-applied formatting and character styles will be removed.