Cutting and pasting from word table cells into indesign table cells - correcting wrong direction

[Cameronsugden]

Hi all, 

I'm replicating a table from a word doc within an indesign document, that I'm designing for a client in the non-profit sector. The table is about 30 pages long so I need to set it up well from the start so it's less painful for the pages to follow. 

Here's the issue, when I copy a ROW of info from cells, then paste into a ROW in my design doc, it pastes everything vertically rather than horizontally. I've researched the heck of this and can't find a solution to this simple problem. See images below. 

Any suggestions? I'm not going to place the table from the word doc by the way - too many glitches/messy issues when I tried this. 

Thanks in advance!

Cam

 

[Eugene Tyson]

Could be the table was constructed incorrectly in Word. 

Best bet for me on this one would be to make a PDF of the Word doc - then you could try convert the PDF back to word - and see if it copies any better.
I'd only do this for the tables - and not for any other portion of it. 

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Side thought

What happens if you use File>Import and import the Word doc directly to InDesign?
For example, copy the table to a new Word doc.
Save it
File>Import the word doc for that table?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Try importing the Word doc, or at least the pages with tables in them, to a dummy InDesign doc, then cut and paste from that doc.

If it gets around this strange flaw, you could advance the technique by pre-editing and -formatting the tables in the intermediate doc, and save time in the final doc.

[Cameronsugden · Accepted solution]

Thanks James and Eugene - appreciate the advice. 

Importing the table from a word doc was way too glitchy no matter what I did - including the above. It's a 30 page table (silly i know) so I'm building it again in Indesign to get it right. 

I found a solution - the page was rotated, meaning the text was being pasted in the wrong direction. Once I rotated the page, it was fine. I'll complete the table, then rotate the table (not the page). This seems to work. 

Thanks again.