Converting from InDesign to Word

[Faisca1978]

Hi everyone,

I have a client who does a lot of RFPs, and because of the size and time constraints, they usually need them in Word. I was wondering if there were any good plugins or scripts to convert a well-designed page, with its styles and everything and convert it to Word so that all styles and the design are saved.

Ideas?

Thanks much,

Natalia

[Derek Cross]

PDF is the only reliable solution for keeping everything as the InDesign document, but have a look this to see if it would meet your requirements: ID2Office - How to Convert InDesign to Word, Convert InDesign to PowerPoint

[BobLevine]

Going from InDesign to Word is very much like putting an egg back in its shell after making an omelet.

Why not just design them in Word?

It's really not that hard and this type of document is firmly in Word's wheelhouse.

[Faisca1978]

Because things in Word are always shifting and acting up... lol

[Jongware]

Faisca1978  wrote

Because things in Word are always shifting and acting up... lol

But you cannot design a page in InDesign, export, and have it open exactly like that in Word. So you'll get shifting text anyway, and you may have to re-do large parts of your design.

To preserve styles, all you can do is export as RTF. But none of the page-layout-thingies that InDesign is famous for, will translate into Word's far more limited page layout capabilities. (Which it also is famous for.) Word is great to write text in. InDesign is great to layout pages in. Each has its strong points; neither can be translated exactly to the other.

[Faisca1978]

Yeah, I know, which is where my frustration lies. I completely understand that. I just want to find the most seamless approach if there is one. Otherwise, I will hire someone who likes working in Word to do the word layout setup.

Unfortunately, this is not up to me or my decision, I am trying to keep my client happy (and it's not my client's decision either, but their clients). So, for that matter, I need to make do with what I got. I was hoping for something close, as I do know there's never gonna be an exact transfer from one to the other.

Thanks 🙂

[Ian Blogs]

Have you tried making a PDF from Indesign and converting to Word via export to Word  in Acrobat

[Faisca1978]

I've done that in the past, it's messy... Besides, I want the styles to be mapped to Word as well.

[Geоrge]

Converting indesign to word...

And you can find similar threads here if you wanna.

[Derek Cross]

They are two different tools – Word's for word processing and InDesign's for page design. You can do word processing in InDesign, but it's not advisable, just as you can do some page design in Word, but again, it's not advisable.

Often in our role, as professional document creators, we have to explain to clients, what is possible /advisable and what is not.

[Faisca1978]

I know. I have done that. Again, this is not because they don't want to do it in InDesign, but rather because their clients don't have the budget or time to do it. Also, my client thinks that you can do in Word almost as good a thing as InDesign. I have argued this point with him to exhaustion, and it doesn't go anywhere. He just doesn't know how much can be done in InDesign, but, again, the point is that if they need to make last minute changes to the RFPs, which are hundreds of pages long in some cases, they don't have InDesign on their end, which is who Word is the preferred tool, and they say that when their clients pitch to whoever they are pitching, the reviewers of the RFPs don't care so much about the look, but rather of the written content.

[Derek Cross]

If it suits them fine, but obviously they are not going to get anything like the quality of an InDesign document. I mean why are they even. involving InDesign in the first place! 

[Laubender]

Hi Natalia,

for transferring paragraph styles and character styles, also for transferring anchored images from InDesign to Word you could try Em Software's product WordsFlow that can be installed as plugin with InDesign:

WordsFlow » Em Software

I think, with WordsFlow you have a good or better starting point than by converting PDF files to Word.

…the Pro version can export original InDesign story content in Word docx format, auto-linking to the result. So you can now take existing InDesign content—however it was produced—and push it out in Word format for further editing and revision, to be shared with your collaborators. As they make additions and changes to the exported document, you can pull them in with a normal WordsFlow story update, usually with just a double-click.

Regards,
Uwe

[Steve Werner]

I'd agree with Uwe that WordsFlow would provide a better workflow between InDesign and Word.

Also, WordsFlow offers a round-trip of documents between InDesign and Word. I don't use it personally but it gets very good reviews for those who do

[Faisca1978]

Thanks Steve,

I will definitely check it out! I much appreciate your 2-cents 🙂

[Faisca1978]

This is pretty useful info, thanks! I will check it out! 🙂

[Faisca1978]

Thank you all for your replies. I have decided to work with a Word specialist. So they'll have the design in PDF to base the design from in Word. I know Word is very limited, but I also know why the client needs it. So, I'll pay someone to do the work I don't enjoy doing and don't feel comfortable doing.

But I will definitely look at WordsFlow, as it seems like a great plugin.

Thanks again!

Natalia