How to Fully Transfer a Large Word Document into InDesign?

[Erin5FEF]

I have a large word document that will only partially transfer into indesign.

I have used the place method and shift double click. 20 of the over 100 hundred pages will come over but the rest will not and I cannot seem to figure out what the problem is.  Looking for help to resolve the issue.

TIA!

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[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @Erin5FEF,

I'm sorry you're having trouble with your Word document not fully transferring into InDesign—that sounds really frustrating, especially with such a large document.

To help you better, could you please share the version of InDesign you're using and your operating system details? 

This issue might be related to how the content is formatted in Word or how it's being imported into InDesign. As a first step, I recommend checking out this Import text from Word and apply InDesign styles - Adobe Community - 14210319, which offers tips on importing Word documents into InDesign and applying styles correctly.

Let me know if that helps or if you need further assistance!

Thank you,   
Abhishek Rao

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

The document is probably fully importing, just not fully placing. Any glitchy bit of text or content can halt the flow. Try this: do a completely clean place, and then go to the end of the last line of what has flowed in. Hit delete a few times (or more). 9 times out of 10, you delete the bad marker or other problem, and wooosh... the rest of the document flows.

[Erin5FEF]

Thank you, I hit delete in one of my attempts but the extra few times fixed the problem!!  All solved!!

[Mike Witherell]

A few chicken-soup things to try:

In Word, put your cursor in the very end of the text. Make sure you are all the way at the end. Back space once or twice (but don't delete text characters). Do a Save-As and try to File > Place that one into InDesign.

or

Save-As the Word docx to an .RTF file and try to File > Place that one into InDesign.

or

While File > Placing into InDesign, click on Show Import Options and remove anything you don't need to import. Maybe leave out Page Breaks?

or 

Examine how much RAM does InDesign have to run with. You should have at base minimum 16GB RAM.

or

Since the Word docx is really long, do you have Smart Text Flow turned on in the InDesign preferences? While I often have that turned off, I might turn it on early in a project and pour in the lengthy content thus making pages up as it goes. Later I often turn that feature back off again.

Just some wild guesses!

[Barb Binder]

Hi @Erin5FEF:

In my experience, either the whole file is placed or InDesign crashes. Like @Mike Witherell and @James Gifford—NitroPress, I suspect the content is there but isn't visible, most likely due to Keep Options or maybe a series of images or long tables.

Here's one more idea: select a few of the last words you can see in InDesign, and then choose Edit > Edit in Story Editor.  Is the remianing text visible, but under the overset line? That means it was imported but doesn't appear in the Layout view.

If you see text under the overset line in Story Editor view, click your cursor in the story, choose Edit > Select All. With the entire story selected, change your Keep Options (Type > Paragraph > Paragraph panel menu) to look exactly like this:

When you click OK, is the rest of the story visible?

If not, please enable Type > Show Hidden Characters and share a screen shot of story editor view with the overset line visible so that we can see what follows the line.

~Barb