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Creating a brochure to be updated by those without Adobe InDesign

New Here ,
May 25, 2022 May 25, 2022

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I want to create a brochure for an annual event that can be passed down to future even organizers.  Is there something I can creative within adobe creative suite that can than be saved in a way that someone with just access to MSWord or similar could update the text?

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Community Expert ,
May 25, 2022 May 25, 2022

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You can save your file as a PDF then use Acrobat to convert to an MS Word doc. Not a clean workflow.

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Community Expert ,
May 25, 2022 May 25, 2022

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Or after you get the brochure in PDF format, make the areas you want to change form fields. Limiting but workable for simple changes.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

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Community Expert ,
May 25, 2022 May 25, 2022

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It's generally not a good idea. 

 

The usual workflow is that they supply you with an MS Word file and all the images required in a separate folder.

 

You can help them with this by providing templates of each section in MS Word. Plus stressing that images must be supplied separately.

 

If you create a Template in InDesign with fake text (or the real text) and then export the threaded frames to a RTF - open that in MS Word and you should retain your text styles for paragraphs and character styles. And along side this you can include all the images for that section as a separate folder - within the text you can put text markers written as <Picture 1.jpg> or whatever image is required for that location.

 

They can then edit this MS Word file to replace the text and supply it to you. And they can update all the images in the folder and indicate within the text where each image is required.

 

Something like <<INSERT IMAGE Picture 1>> then you can easily spot or find the location of the image placement.

 

At the end of each designed annual - you can export each section again to RTF then save as MS Word and include the images for those pages. 

 

This provides a clear handover procedure.

 

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The other method would be that they purchase a copy of InCopy.

But it require that they would need training on how to handle this workflow.

It could be more trouble than it's worth especially if it's changing hands every year.

 

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There are 3rd party solutions, but my exploration of these in the past were they were expensive and may not suit. But if money is not an issue, then let me know and I'll see what I can dig up again.

 

 

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Community Expert ,
May 26, 2022 May 26, 2022

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The best way to do this is to create the brochure in Powerpoint, it can then be passed to others for revision. Anyone who has MSWord is likely to also have Powerpoint. The application is far more sophisticated nowadays than the earlier versions.

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Community Expert ,
May 26, 2022 May 26, 2022

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You've been given some suggestions but the real answer to your question is no. Even with InCopy, you wouldn't be able to export a high-quality PDF.

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Community Expert ,
May 26, 2022 May 26, 2022

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My two cents, do it in word. If that's waht your users have and use, that's the application to use.

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Community Expert ,
May 26, 2022 May 26, 2022

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The thing about Word documents is that they are limited in the kinds of designs that can be produced – you can only include simple text and images. Whereas Powerpoint has a whole range of facilities for placing images and shapes and including fine typography and you can send the pages to customers for them to edit themselves before you output it to PDF for printing. Here are some real-life examples of print documents produced with Powerpoint.

(Images courtesy of Nolan Haims Creative)

Powerpoint for print samples.jpg

 

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Community Expert ,
May 26, 2022 May 26, 2022

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I suspect that you can get more sophisticated output from Powerpoint, but you probably also need a more sophisticated user. Inept users can screw up almost anything.

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Community Expert ,
May 26, 2022 May 26, 2022

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Amazing what you can do without either styles or numerical control of anything. (Both of which at least Word allows.) 😛

 

Sorry, I still see it as Colorforms for administrative assistants. I will use nearly any tool a client needs or wants, given good reasons, but a requirement to use PP is pretty much a hard "Sorry, find someone else." (I am currently touching up ~100 diagrams for a book in PP only because it's a colleague whom I owe one. Nothing about the newest version causes me to change my longstanding opinion that PP is the worst single app in wide usage.)

 

—


â•Ÿ Word & InDesign to Kindle & EPUB: a Guide to Pro Results (Amazon) â•¢

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Community Expert ,
May 26, 2022 May 26, 2022

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Obviously, you need a professional designer to set up the original document but others can easily update it, which is the point of the original question. The technique is used a lot by financial companies who want to add last-minute information themselves.

This might help your styles issue:

https://creativepro.com/creating-paragraph-styles-in-powerpoint/

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Community Expert ,
May 30, 2022 May 30, 2022

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Hi Alyson,

well, with the help of the WordsFlowPro plug-in for InDesign by emsoftware you can establish a workflow that might work for your clients with MSWord. You'll first do your layout with InDesign and by the help of that plug-in you could export one MSWord file for every story in InDesign to your client could edit and maintain. Read into your options and download a test version:

http://emsoftware.com/products/wordsflow/

 

Allow yourself some days for experimenting and testing the workflow with your clients.

 

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

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