How to avoid having to remap paragraph styles when relinking linked Word document?

[Brian27472827l5wr]

I received a set of InDesign files and an associated Links folder containing linked content. The main story flow of the InDesign document is linked from a Microsoft Word document in the Links folder. This is not how I would have set it up, but it is what it is. I guess the author wanted to continue modifying text after layout and was unwilling to learn how to use InCopy.

Now that I have received this package as zip file package, I need to set it up to start working on it in my local evironment. When I open the InDesign file, it tells me all the links need to be updated. If I select the option to Update Links, all of the paragraph styles for the text linked from the Word document go haywire. How do I prevent this from happening?

Correct paragraph styles, but with out-of-date links:

Updated links, resulting in overwritten paragraph styles. All paragraphs get overwritten with whatever paragraph style happens to be selected in the paragraph styles menu:

Is there a way to set it to not re-set paragraph styles when updating links?

[BobLevine]

I cannot possibly recommend this workflow natively. If you really need to link Word documents then I strongly suggest Wordsflow from em Software.

[Brian27472827l5wr]

Don't worry, you are preaching to the choir. The only reason I want to update the link is so I can Unlink, but that option is greyed out as long as the link is out-of-date, so I am stuck in a Catch-22!

[BobLevine]

Try deleting or moving the Word file so it shows as a missing link. If you still can't kill it, then try exporting to IDML and opening that.

[Brian27472827l5wr]

I tried both of these and they did not change the outcome (repairing the link still resulted in all of the paragraph styles being reset).

Fortunately, I was able to go back to the person who originally set up the files and ask them to embed the Word document links. Now I have InDesign files with text content from embedded Word documents and all of the paragraph styles look correct.

Is there a simple way to convert the embedded Word documents into native text in InDesign? If not, should I expect any problems stemming from storing the text as embedded Word duments? My next step will be to set up cross references in InDesign. I am nervous whether this will be fully compatible with text stored as embedded Word documents.

Thanks!

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

A Word document is not "embedded" into InDesign, the text and possibly formats are imported. After that, there is no connection to the Word document (unless using EmSoftware WordsFlow).

If you link to the Word document, done by turning on the preference, you can't edit or format the text in InDesign. (Technically, you can but you will lose this information when updating.) This link never worked properly except for Excel files. 

If you absolutely need the edits in the Word file, you are going to have to update and then unlink from the Links panel to prevent future problems. However, you will lose any edits or formatting done in InDesign. If the document changes too much after you update the link, you may want to unlink and then make the edits manually.