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Participant
October 5, 2020
Answered

Faint lines showing up in In/Design after placing Word document. How do I get rid of them?

  • October 5, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 2103 views

After 'placing' a Word document in InDesign CS5, faint lines are showing up on almost every page of the InDesign file.  No lines are in Word document. Lines show up and print after exporting to a print quality PDF.  How do I get rid of these lines in the InDesign file?

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Correct answer Mike Witherell

A couple of thoughts:

On long documents with lots of text, always control the text with well-described paragraph styles. Otherwise it takes forever to tweak and adjust and edit things.

But also:

Never use the invasive Normal paragraph style from Word.

Never use InDesign's Basic Paragraph Style.

Never (or rarely) allow one style to be based on another style. Especially Basic Paragraph Style or Normal style. Choose No Paragraph Style most of the time in the Based On drop down choice..

Make sure to use character styles for attributes like Bold, Italic, and other occasional attributes within the paragraph of typesetting.

2 replies

Mike Witherell
Community Expert
Mike WitherellCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
October 6, 2020

A couple of thoughts:

On long documents with lots of text, always control the text with well-described paragraph styles. Otherwise it takes forever to tweak and adjust and edit things.

But also:

Never use the invasive Normal paragraph style from Word.

Never use InDesign's Basic Paragraph Style.

Never (or rarely) allow one style to be based on another style. Especially Basic Paragraph Style or Normal style. Choose No Paragraph Style most of the time in the Based On drop down choice..

Make sure to use character styles for attributes like Bold, Italic, and other occasional attributes within the paragraph of typesetting.

Mike Witherell
Mike Witherell
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 5, 2020

Maybe the Word doc has paragraph styles (or character styles) applied to the text that call for underlining? Or maybe your character style or attribute for underlining was active when you placed the Word doc? Do your paragraph styles show a + sign on the affected text?

Mike Witherell
Participant
October 5, 2020

I'll check that but it's not like the text is underlined. On some pages the first line has a line under it (but really, really close to the text) and then the next paragraph only a line in the middle of the text has a line.  InDesign doesn't recognize that aniy of the text is underlined.  If they didn't print, I wouldn't worry about them, but they do print.