guide for prepping word document for typesetting in indesign

[JonathanArias]

Hi,

I have a question about prepping a word document for typesetting.

Is there a guide I can give to writers/editorial  that they can follow that would help speed up the typesetting process for long documents?

I am getting lots of word document that are not set up with styles, footnotes. Looking to help them set up documents better so i can  and speed up typesetting/design stage.

Anything i can share with writers or editorial teams?

Thanks

[Derek Cross · Accepted solution]

You can watch this online video tutorial and possibly subsequently create your own guide (you can get 30-day free trial):

Word and InDesign: Integration

[JonathanArias]

nice!!

[JonathanArias]

i will have to make a guide, they will not watch 3hrs worth of video...

[Derek Cross]

Exactly – you can create it to suite your particular requirements.

[MW Design]

A guide tailored to your end users is the ideal. That way there isn't extraneous information that simply makes time-pressured users' eyes glaze over whereupon important bits may never get a read, much less followed.

I know you mention the use of styles. One main thing that is likely hammered home in the video (haven't watched it) is the religious use of styles. At the least, paragraph styles if not also character styles. The ad hoc use of local formatting on the base style Normal (or whatever) is the bane of all layout people. This is the hardest part for me to communicate effectively to newer clients even though we walk through the process.

I get fairly clean, nicely styled documents for the most part from my steady clients. Even so, there is always an editor or three that simply will not comply. So I still need to run through the documents and fix style usage. It is a reasonably minimal thing to do that saves so much effort once it hits the layout application.

Mike

[@mj]

You may find this helpful

https://redokun.com/blog/word-to-indesign

HTH

[JonathanArias]

I like this very much. good link.

Thank you

[@mj]

Awesomeness.

I offer building the templates for my clients as a service, mimicking the ID stylesheets, fonts and page geometry as closely as possible.

Benefit to client: They get a better sense of word count and look and feel even before it's typeset.

Benefit to design team: A clean, reliable inpit source.

You may want to consider this option too Jonathan.

[JonathanArias]

thank you