Can't place text from Word

[Shirley27543288jmaw]

Hi, I have a short book set up in Word but when I use the Place option, only the title page shows...nothing else transfers over. What am I doing wrong? I thought it might be the page breaks?? The book is less than 10k words, not many chapters so I didn't want to break it down into 1-page documents for each chapter. Can you help?

Thanks!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

It sounds as if the placed file is not auto-flowing to create the needed number of pages.

With text frames showing, is there a red plus sign at the bottom right of that first text frame? That means there is more text.

Start over, and when you place the doc file, hold down shift. The tiny icon should show a snaking arrow line, indicating it will auto flow the content to multiple pages.

[Shirley27543288jmaw]

Hi, thanks. I just tried again and it's the same thing. There was a little
red arrow but it was like a ghost copy of what I'd already copied - so it
showed the title again.
As for holding down shift, I'm not sure when you do this? Be the time I've
clicked OK to place the file, it's already working on placing the text, if
you see what I mean...

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Undo everything you've done; it should be a completely empty InDesign file with no leftovers of things you might have placed before.

Grab the Word doc to place, and position the cursor at the upper left-hand corner of the page layout. (I'd show a screen snip but my system hides the ID cursor when I try!)

The cursor should look like a little diagram of paragraphs, meaning it's ready to place one page. When you press and hold Shift, it should turn to a snaking arrow, meaning it's ready to auto flow content onto multiple pages.

When you click, it should do just that. But other content in the way will mess up the process, so start with a completely cleared page or even a new InDesign doc file.

[Shirley27543288jmaw]

Ah, OK! You're a star. I'll try that tomorrow, had to switch off the
computer before I chuck it out the window. I'll start fresh. Thanks!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

If it helps, I can NEVER quite remember this function, and have to fumble around a bit before I recakk which combination forces auto-flow. 🙂

[Peter Spier]

Holding Shift wghile clciking the loaded cursor autoflows the whole document to be imported. Holding Alt/Opt flows one page but leaves the cursor loaded to flow the next if there's alread a sytem of frames you want to use (or if you want to skip over a page, maybe).

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Yes, it's a very flexible system... but it can be hard to remember exactly which key-click combinations function in which way. 🙂