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Can I make a manuscript from my indesign book

Community Beginner ,
Sep 10, 2022 Sep 10, 2022

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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 

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Expert , Sep 10, 2022 Sep 10, 2022

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

...

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Community Expert ,
Sep 10, 2022 Sep 10, 2022

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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.

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Community Beginner ,
Sep 18, 2022 Sep 18, 2022

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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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Community Expert ,
Sep 10, 2022 Sep 10, 2022

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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.

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Community Beginner ,
Sep 16, 2022 Sep 16, 2022

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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 

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Community Expert ,
Sep 18, 2022 Sep 18, 2022

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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.

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Community Beginner ,
Sep 18, 2022 Sep 18, 2022

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Dear Peter 

Thank you for taking the trouble to reply.  After sending the book to several publishers, they advised in order to edit and publish I need to take the text and put it into a manuscript.  Reading the book again 10 years on, I feel it needs extensive editing and also the layout looks a bit dated too, so it needs a lot of things. There are 2 books.  Module 2 doesn't need much editing but module 1 could be reduced by half and that's why I need to get it back to a manuscript.  Had I known that publishers wanted things in manuscripts I wouldn't have bothered to have the book typeset so when I found out, I couldn't look at the book for years as I was completely disheartened.  I took a 10 year break to look after my mum and after she died recently I decided I would see what I could do.  I decided the book was too wordy, too outdated looking and needed a complete overhaul.  I agree I won't have the skills for such complex layout and eventually I am hoping to get it laid out by a professional publisher and use my layout as a guide so they can see how the pictures fit with the text.  I couldn't get anyone to strip the text out for me.  I've had people say they could and then they've just send me a word version of the pdf which wasn't helpful either.  The way the text came out on incopy was ideal and created a well set out word doc I just don't understand why the text disappeared afte page 15.  I'm hoping that later I can make slides and turn the book into a course and a back up for an audio book and I decided I would learn the basics of indesign as its helpful to have some idea of how the software works going forward.  For example if I hadn't bought the software, I wouldn't have known about incopy and assuming I can strip out the text it will be a start to moving the project forward.    I don't know if that makes sense

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Community Expert ,
Sep 18, 2022 Sep 18, 2022

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OK, good. It sounds like you're on the right track. I'm not a user of InCopy myself, so I can't really say what's going wrong.

If I understand correctly, you've been copying from InCopy and pasting into Word, so it might be just as easy to copy from InDesign directly. To speed things up you can put your cursor anywhere in a story anc clicck 5 times quicklu to select the entire story, even if it crosses multiple pages.

I'm currently on the road, but I'm a retiree with time on my hands and back pain issues, so if you find you need more direct help you may feel free to contact me directly and I'll see what I can do to get you on track. Just click my name on this post to send me a message.

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Community Beginner ,
Sep 18, 2022 Sep 18, 2022

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Thank you Peter I will try that trick tomorrow. Thank you so much

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Community Beginner ,
Sep 18, 2022 Sep 18, 2022

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Thank you for your reply.  I did manage to get a call with support and the agent and he put all the text into ic and I started pasting into word.  I thought this is great and then after page 15 all the pages were blank and I couldn't remember how he did it which is frustrating.  Also some of the pages were out of sync so it would go from page 15 to page 336.

 

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Community Expert ,
Sep 10, 2022 Sep 10, 2022

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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).

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Community Expert ,
Sep 10, 2022 Sep 10, 2022

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

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Community Expert ,
Sep 10, 2022 Sep 10, 2022

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

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Community Expert ,
Sep 10, 2022 Sep 10, 2022

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Just saying there's a differencer between a quick forum post and a proof-read publication...

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Community Beginner ,
Sep 18, 2022 Sep 18, 2022

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You're not wrong, I am a bit dyslexic so I do make a lot of mistakes but I will get it checked over by someone else because sometimes I can't see the mistakes myself. 

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Community Expert ,
Sep 10, 2022 Sep 10, 2022

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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.

 

—


┋┊ InDesign to Kindle (& EPUB): A Professional Guide, v3.1 ┊ (Amazon) ┊┋

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Explorer ,
Sep 16, 2022 Sep 16, 2022

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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.

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Community Expert ,
Sep 16, 2022 Sep 16, 2022

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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.

 

—


┋┊ InDesign to Kindle (& EPUB): A Professional Guide, v3.1 ┊ (Amazon) ┊┋

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