Flowed text acquires undesired styles

[Grundoon Groundhog]

I am working on a bibliography whose text includes all the usual font weights plus some words in all caps, some in small caps. Variations are from paragraph to paragraph. The Word document has been prepared to accommodate these differences. When it is flowed into InDesign, many peculiar things happen. Entire paragraphs are all caps, are italics, are both etc. No character styles have been applied. There should be one for the first word of the paragraph; this is not applied with the paragraph style. When the text is flowed in  the various caps, italics, small caps etc. must be maintained while allowing the regular text to be regular text.

I just checked a previous version, and this problem was not occurring. I did change the font, but surely that wouldn't cause this problem?

Why would this happen? What do I do? I' am attaching the original Word document and the InDesign document. Any help greatly appreciated.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I haven't looked at the files, but are the applied overrides in Word assigned character styles, or just spot overrides? If the formatting is spot overrides, it can be hard for the import to follow the changes. The reliable method is to use ONLY defined character styles for these running changes, and that includes bold, italic and underlilne. (That is, there should be defined character styles named Bold, Italic, BoldItalic, etc., and not a reliance on even Word's spot formatting for these things.)

[Grundoon Groundhog]

Unfortunately the text is being copyedited and I don't know if those styles have been applied in the Word documents. It would be impossible to impose them in InDesign as there are so many occurrences of each format. Would overriding overrides in ID work somehow?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

If the styles aren't being consistently applied in Word, then they will have to be manually cleaned up in InDesign, a very tedious process that will need meticulous proofing.

There are no shortcuts for importing from Word. Either the source file is cleanly formatted (using styles) and free of corruption, or it will have to be fixed at one or both ends to get a satisfactory result. There's no "magic method" that can get past a messy or glitchy input file.

Fixing it in ID, using carefully defined styles, and proofing it against a PDF provided by the source/author is the only second way that doesn't involve having the source proof the material for correction in InDesign.

[Grundoon Groundhog]

That's what I was afraid of. But it flowed perfectly yesterday in a different version of the document.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

You might try the usual fix-up method of exporting it to RTF, then open that and save to DOC and DOCX. One of those might import without glitches. The fundamental flaws of spot formatting will remain, though.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

@Grundoon Groundhog : Saving the Word file as a .DOC format solved it for me with your ID file. Not only that, it placed far faster.

That being said I placed the original .DOCX in a brand new document in my own ID and it placed just fine, albeit much slower than placing a .DOC file, so try .DOC and see what it does for you.

[Grundoon Groundhog]

Thanks, I’ll give that a shot.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Grundoon Groundhog 

About what @James Gifford—NitroPress mentioned - applying styles to local overrides in WORD - here is link to the set of Macros that will do it in WORD:

https://tinyurl.com/5n75zn5b

[Grundoon Groundhog]

Um, thanks, but it downloads and can’t be opened.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Grundoon Groundhog 

It's a ZIP:

[silvia_vc]

No hay metodo mágico? jaja. Quark xpress tiene resuelto este problema taaaan básicos en el manejo del texto. No entiendo por qué Adobe no se da cuenta de lo problemático que es trabajar con texto en ID, no puedo creer que en todo este tiempo no se den cuenta de lo lejos que están de hacer sencilla la tarea de modificar una tipografía sin variar estilos.

Hice varias pruebas pero no obtuve resultados. Importar un texto en indesign consume mucho más tiempo del esperado. Que solo funciona con RTF o DOC, que es necesario abrir el texto antes, para cambiar la tipografía para mantener estilos y luego exportarlo.

Cuando inicié usando ID pensé que en las próximas versiones lo resolverían pero eso nunca pasó.   😞

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I'm not quite sure the place for your post is as a continuation of this thread, but I guess it's connected.

You seem to want InDesign to do all its "magic" without all the hassles of using styles. As ID is absolutely, 100% styles-based and -driven, that notion is about like wanting Photoshop to do everything without having to mess around with color swatches.

Both Word and QXP are also intensively styles-based, although Word in particular does everything possible to hide and bypass the feature, and most users do.

And for the nth time, Microsoft is not Adobe, nor is Adobe Microsoft. While import of Word docs is a standard workflow in this era, there is absolutely no reason to expect InDesign to perfectly read and reformat a file format that is loosely managed even by its originator, with undocumented changes from version to version and even within app versions. (Let's not even talk about the sloppy mess that is most "converted" DOC/X format from other apps.) Yes, it would be wonderful if Word was a seamless import; it's not and likely never will be, even with the advanced third-party plugins and converters. If you have anger at this, it really should be aimed at Microsoft, not Adobe.

[silvia_vc]

No uso Word, no tengo razón para fastidiarme con ellos. 

Solo pido que vean lo que hacen otras aplicaciones para resolver funciones imprescindibles en el manejo de txt para la composición de paginas.

slds.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

At this point, there essentially are no page layout apps other than InDesign, so I am not sure what comparison you want to make here. Do you have specific examples of what some other/older/alternative app does that InDesign does not?

Note that every single user has a wishlist of features that would solve some workflow problem that is rarely used or unique to them, or a desire that existing features worked in some different way, but that will be true no matter how fully an app is "optimized."

[silvia_vc]

no conocés Quark Xpress? Permite cambiar la tipografía de un texto completo manteniendo Italics, bold, bold italic, etc.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Quark has been a very, very minor player for at least a decade, but is still available if you find it preferable. (That it has many outdated features and only slowly acquires newer ones might make it an undesirable option, though.) I understand you can still get WordPerfect, too, if you want it.

ID will retain all properly appled formatting with a font change. I'm not sure what more/else you're asking for.

If the question is "retain formatting for Word import"  —well, we're back to both the erratic DOC/X format and the very, very sloppy practices of most Word users. Not ID's fault.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

don't know Quark Xpress? It allows you to change the typography of an entire text while keeping Italics, bold, bold italic, etc.

By silvia_vc

InDesign as well - as long as you prepare your text correctly - apply Paragraph and Character Styles.

[silvia_vc]

de verdad? a mi no me funciona. Puedes decirme cómo lo haces?

intenté armar estilo de párrafo y de fuente pero no permite seleccionar solo tipografía, siempre tengo que definir estilo.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

de verdad? a mi no me funciona. Puedes decirme cómo lo haces?

intenté armar estilo de párrafo y de fuente pero no permite seleccionar solo tipografía, siempre tengo que definir estilo.

By silvia_vc

But this way - you are working with "local overrides" - using Char & Para Styles is the only correct way to work with text.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I don't have the facility (skill) to make little screen-cap videos as some here do, but here —

This is a paragraph style named TEST, defined as Minion Pro Regular, with three defined Character Styles applied:

This is the exact same text, with TEST changed to Myriad Pro:

And just to accommodate sloppy spot formatting practices, this is the first version (Minion) selected and changed to Myriad:

Is there something else you want ID to be able to do?

[silvia_vc]

agradezco la muestra, y veo que funciona con Minion y Myriad, pero no me ha resultado para Helvetica por ej.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

It will work with any font that actually has all four faces (or any equivalents you're using, such as Light or Heavy). It will not, as Word does, "synthesize" a Bold-Italic face if the font does not have one. And it will not reliably map from, say, SomeFont Italic to AnotherFont Oblique.

ETA: And just to cap this off, much of what you're asking about and what causes problems with Word import is that Word does have that "helpful" feature of bolding and italicizing using a literal override of the font. You can even "bold" fonts like Impact and Hobo Heavy. This hack is convenient for Word spot-formatters whipping out a report or memo, but creates a messy file that apps like ID can't process cleanly... hence any imported text using this method will have bad or missing formatting.