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Can I make a manuscript from my indesign book

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
September 10, 2022
4 replies
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Hallo community

I'm brand new to Indesign. I decided to learn Indesign because I made a book several years ago and it needs the whole look updating. I found it so difficult editting it because it had to be converted to a pdf each time I sent it to the artist and it got very confusing. The book is a yoga book with lots of pictures in it and I'm wondering if a) I can convert the book to another template or if I have to start from scratch. If I have to start from scratch, I need to pull out the text and make a manuscript in a word document. I've tried converting the indesign to word but that didn't help. Is there any way I can take out all the formatting so it can just be editted in word? Not sure if that makes any sense. I'm slowly working my way through all the videos but I can't find anything that covers this particular issue. Thank you so much, look forward to your replies.

Joy

The_Yoga_For_Back_Pain_Toolkit_-_Module_2_(1).pdf

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Correct answer Peter Spier

I see that the PDF you posted was made in InDesign version 17, so you've already converted it. You can export the text from InDesing to .rtf or .txt which can be edited in Word, but it needs to be done story-by-story, so unless all of the manin copy is linked into a single story (single flow of text from frame to frame) you'll have some work to do. You could link the frames yourself (work on a copy) since text reflow won't be important for editing in Word. You can try using the TextStitch plugin from Rorohiko (https://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/indesign-downloads/textstitch/) to do it. Looks like it is now free. There is also a the Export All Stories sample script installed in the Scripts panel which will do exactly that -- export ALL stories, including your page numbers and other miscellaneous stuff -- so there will be a lot of weeding out to do.

You can use copy/paste to move the exisiting text into a new .indd document.

You say you have to convert to PDF each time you send to the artist. Do they not have InDesign?

Since you are collaborating with an artist, perhaps they are doing the layout and you only need to edit the text. That might be more easily accomplished using an InCopy workflow. If you subscribed to the entire Creative Cloud package rather than just InDesign, InCopy would be included as part of the subscription and you are free to install it.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

Having done similar "restarts," I'd go ID -> PDF -> Word and put time into cleaning up and reformatting the resulting Word doc. Word is much easier to edit, spell-check and set basic styles in than ID (unless you're very experienced in editing there) and it would be worth all the redo/start-over effort even if you will bring it back into ID for final formatting again.

Good project on which to learn advanced search-and-replace and basic macros to speed and automate the cleanup, as well. And, if it wasn't done the first time, to apply rigorous structure and style application in preparation for the return to InDesign.

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R

RealAnise

Known Participant

I'm starting a new project and following all of these threads, and I just wanted to let you know-- putting the title of your book in your signature is a technique that works!~ 😉 I immediately went to Amazon and got a Kindle sample, and I'll probably buy the book.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

My sig is uncomfortably self-promoting and I would make it more subtle if this forum allowed even basic formatting of sigs. I include it only because it's very specific to a major use of this software, and most of my contributions here are related to EPUB/Kindle creation, and because it's cheap. 🙂

Adobe obviously tolerates it, but this is a good place to invite any forum user who thinks I'm misusing the space to drop me a DM.

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Derek Cross

Community Expert

On a side issue, you probably need to get an editor to check the spelling in your manuscript (based on your post, which has several spelling mistakes).

Peter Spier

Community Expert

Hey, I'm pretty sure 99% of my posts have speling errors, too!

Derek Cross

Community Expert

Maybe you do Peter, but if you have literals in your published work it undermines its verisimilitude.

Peter Spier

Correct answer

Community Expert

I see that the PDF you posted was made in InDesign version 17, so you've already converted it. You can export the text from InDesing to .rtf or .txt which can be edited in Word, but it needs to be done story-by-story, so unless all of the manin copy is linked into a single story (single flow of text from frame to frame) you'll have some work to do. You could link the frames yourself (work on a copy) since text reflow won't be important for editing in Word. You can try using the TextStitch plugin from Rorohiko (https://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/indesign-downloads/textstitch/) to do it. Looks like it is now free. There is also a the Export All Stories sample script installed in the Scripts panel which will do exactly that -- export ALL stories, including your page numbers and other miscellaneous stuff -- so there will be a lot of weeding out to do.

You can use copy/paste to move the exisiting text into a new .indd document.

You say you have to convert to PDF each time you send to the artist. Do they not have InDesign?

Since you are collaborating with an artist, perhaps they are doing the layout and you only need to edit the text. That might be more easily accomplished using an InCopy workflow. If you subscribed to the entire Creative Cloud package rather than just InDesign, InCopy would be included as part of the subscription and you are free to install it.

joyogaAuthor

Participating Frequently

Dear Peter

Thank you for your very detailed reply. I'm a complete beginner so a lot of the technical terms went over my head. however I did manage to export all the text to Incopy and I've got 365 pages. I started copying and pasting into word and the text has come out very nicely and very clear its just taking forever as I have to do it one page at a time. You were talking about stitching the text together, is it possible I can speed up this process? I look forward to hearing from you. thanks Joy

Peter Spier

Community Expert

How did you do the text originally, before having the designers put it into InDesign?

Are you planning on continuing with the designers, or to do the layout work yourself now?

InCopy workflow is generally intended for author/designer collaboration on a story-by-story (a stroy, in InDesign, is a single set of frames that are connected -- can be one or many, and a document may have dozens or hundreds of stories).

This book project, as I'm sure you're discovering, is pretty advanced and may be more than you can handle right now by yourself. I'm not clear what stage of editing you are on or how extensive the edits are that you need to make. Is this a complete re-write in which case moving everything into Word (or starting with the old manuscript) makes a lot of sense to me. If it's relatively minor tweaking, where seeing the current layout is beneficial, I think working directly in InCopy, or making up a PDF directly, may make more sense.

I'm not sure if that's helpful.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

What did you use tocreate the book the first time? That will determine whether, and how easily irt can be converted to InDesign.

Ther is a commercial plug-in for InDesign, PDF2ID, that can convert a PDF, but the results with a comp[lex layout such as your book may be such that you will do as much work as if you started from scratch (I've never used PDF2ID). There might be a trial version...

Likewise, Acrobat Pro can save your PDF in Word format, but I would guess that, again, given the complexity of the layout, you might find it nearly impossible to work with in Word.

joyogaAuthor

Participating Frequently

Indesign. I didn't do it I had a designer do it. It was so complicated that I decided to learn the software myself so I didn't have to keep converting in to a pdf to proof read it et. This is why I am trying to learn it myself.

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