How to import Word doc to InDesign & make urls live, then export to pdf have them stay live

[HHSDebbie]

(I'm using InDesign CC 15.1.3) Windows 10)

This is about working with urls. I so appreciate some help.

-I'm given WORD format text files.

-I copy & paste them in InDesign to preserve their (complex character) formatting.

-The urls are not live links in the Word files. It's never been an issue because live urls weren't previously required, but the organization now wants this.

-How do I make them live in InDesign? I've tried to find this info, but it's just not clear to me-I've never had a project that needed live urls. AND:

-after making them live in InDesign, they will be exported in a high quality pdf file to the organization for them to use on their website starting with this current issue. So how do I save that file - do I use the 'web' save option?

-THEN ALSO, I upload a high quality pdf file of the issue to a professional printing company to print for members wanting a printed copy. Is there anything different I have to do for the print company?

Many, many thanks for your replies! Debbie

[HHSDebbie]

Note: I don't need help getting the WORD file in to InDesign - I need help with how to get the urls live once they are in ID, and then keep them live through 2 different pdf exports. Thanks! Deb

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

For what it's worth, I have found that it's easiest to do as much document prep, editing etc. in Word as possible, before import to InDesign. In general, Word has more, and better, editing tools and more streamlined features and processes; ID as a "word processor" is a bit on the clunky and limited side.

Make the links live in Word. Macros (which ID lacks) could greatly speed the process, especially if it's a repeated need, as you imply.

Using Place and the Import Options might help as well. Cut and paste... has its limitations.

Import to ID and export to PDF should then be pretty seamless, especially if you note Derek's suggestions. (Not all PDF export is the same, and some designers go through a lot of frustration before learning that. 🙂 )

[HHSDebbie]

Hi Derek Cross and James Gifford,

I’ve decided that for now I’m going to just work within InDesign to turn the urls into hyperlinks because I’ve experience how WORD likes to try to hold onto formatting.

The text will come from WORD, but there could be possibly be additional formatting people may have applied with other software prior to turning articles in to the editor of the publication, who then saves everything as a WORD file and sends them to me.

Are there any steps I should do in InDesign to strip any formatting previously done to each url prior to formatting it for use in ID?

I've become a little comfortable with the hyperlinks panel and jumping from there to the options available in the top right hand corner of that panel. But, I’m not having success achieving the results using the various help files in InDesign.

To experiment, I’ve copied and pasted some text that includes some non-live urls from a previous issue I put together. All text I work with comes to me the way I described above. So, one thing that is happening, I don’t understand at all is when I try to make a couple of the urls live, it is opening the file of the issue where I got the text copy to paste in my sample doc (to experiment). Why is it linked to that other file? How can I “detach” it? I have to fix these issues so the printing company doesn’t have to deal with them.

Continuing; I can’t figure out what is going wrong with these steps: My “traffic lights” are all gray BUT when I click the name in the Hyperlinks panel, they do open up the correct website.

I set up a Character Style to add an underline, but there are none.

I don’t know if this is relevant, and I don’t understand it: if you want the source text to be generated from the destination text, insert a cross-reference instead of adding a hyperlink. See Cross-references.

This is the info I’ve been following from the ID online instructions:

Open the Hyperlinks panel

• Choose Window > Interactive > Hyperlinks.

Sort hyperlinks in the Hyperlinks panel

1. Choose Sort from the Hyperlinks panel menu, and then choose any of the following:

 Manually

Displays the hyperlinks in the order in which they were added to the document.

By Name

Displays the hyperlinks in alphabetical order.

By Type

Displays the hyperlinks in groups of similar type.

Create hyperlinks

You can create hyperlinks to pages, URLs, text anchors, email addresses, and files. If you create a hyperlink to a page or text anchor in a different document, make sure that the exported files appear in the same folder.

Note:

To show or hide hyperlinks, choose View > Extras > Show Hyperlinks or Hide Hyperlinks.

Note:

Hyperlinks are included in exported Adobe PDF files if Hyperlinks is selected in the Export Adobe PDF dialog box in InDesign. Hyperlinks are included in the exported SWF file if Include Hyperlinks is selected in the Export SWF dialog box.

Create a hyperlink to a web page (URL)

You can use several different methods to create hyperlinks to URLs. When you specify a URL, you can use any valid Internet resource protocol: http://, file://, ftp://, or mailto://.

You can also use the Buttons feature to link to web pages. (See Buttons.)

Note:

In InDesign, hyperlinks are automatically formatted with the Hyperlink style - underline blue text.

1. SELECT THE HTTPS://INFORMATION.COM (EXAMPLE)

1. Right-click the selected text,-URL frame, or graphic, and then choose 

1. Hyperlinks > Edit Hyperlinks. The New Hyperlink dialog box is displayed.

1. Specify an appropriate URL destination:

• In the URL text box, type or paste the URL name (such as http://www.adobe.com). Ensure that the URL option is selected in the Link To drop-down.
  -OR-

• Select a previously added URL from the URL drop-down. The hyperlink appearance is the same as that used in the previous URL.

1. Set or change the appearance settings in the Appearance tab.
   Provide the alternate text in the Accessibility tab. This will appear when the image is not displayed.
2. Click OK.

Note:

If a URL hyperlink isn’t working in the exported PDF, there may be a problem with the hyperlink being a “Shared Destination”. Deselect the Shared Hyperlink Destination checkbox, and then click OK.

You have no idea how much I appreciate your help  -Debbie

[Derek Cross]

You can use the Hyperlinks dialogue box to create the hyperlink (or alternatively, Type > Hyperlinks & Cross-References). You can use a word or words or an image as the link in the InDesign document to an external website. The PDF needs to be exported for live links as an Interactive PDF. The version for print should be specified by your printers – normally a PDF/X-1 or PDF/X-4.
There is this plugin that might be worth looking at (I'm not familiar with it):

https://www.id-extras.com/products/hyperlinkpro/

[HHSDebbie]

Thank you so much Derek. I'm very hopeful for this!  Debbie

[innovative_adventurer5D56]

if you keep the formatting when you place the word file, by check show import options then preserve formtting you will get the url's live already.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

If the links are not live in Word, they won't be live in ID. There are no import options that change this, which is true for both 'bare' links (www google com) and ones with the prefix (http:// www  google com). [spaces to prevent link formation here.]

But it should be the work of but a few minutes to enable all links in the Word doc before import.

[HHSDebbie]

Thank you James. I will have to research how to make them live in WORD as I really don't use many features of it, and usually only use it to cut & paste the text file to InDesign.

[HHSDebbie]

Thank you for replying. Unfortunately, as James Gifford mentioned below, they are not live in the WORD file. I WILL keep this in mind in case they do every come to me as live links though!

[Derek Cross]

For those following this thread who want to study the subject in depth, there's a useful recent Linked Learning tutorial called Smarter Workflows with InDesign and Word by Anne-Marie Concepción.  (New subscribers to Linkedin Learning can get 30-days free access.)

The description of the course states:
Importing a Word file into InDesign and then formatting it is a common yet often frustrating task for many designers. In this course, Anne-Marie Concepcion shows you how to avoid that frustration and use Word’s formatting to your advantage, streamlining the workflow. This fast-paced, comprehensive course covers best practices, tips, and workarounds for dealing with damaged or corrupt Word files, “crazy” text formatting, faux fonts, embedded images, Word “art,” and unwanted hyperlinks. Anne-Marie thoroughly covers the basics of importing text with and without styles, mapping styles, and common clean-up tasks. One full chapter highlights several must-have InDesign scripts designed to solve issues with Word files, and another chapter presents her favorite “Word-adjacent” workflows you may want to add, such as the WordsFlow and DocsFlow plugins and using Adobe InCopy. Anne-Marie finishes up with resources to help you keep up to date on changes to Word and InDesign workflows.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Almost anyone who does any kind of "publishing" has to take Word docs and get them into ID as smoothly as possible. I have a couple of worklists and tip sheets, but quite a few users can probably benefit from a focused, up-to-date tutorial like this... and I am VERY sparing in thinking well of most tutorials. 🙂

[HHSDebbie]

Thank you Derek, I will look in to this - I clearly need it! 🙂  Debbie

[HHSDebbie]

Hi Derek Cross and James Gifford,

I’ve decided that for now I’m going to just work within InDesign to turn the urls into hyperlinks because I’ve experience how WORD likes to try to hold onto formatting.

The text will come from WORD, but there could be possibly be additional formatting people may have applied with other software prior to turning articles in to the editor of the publication, who then saves everything as a WORD file and sends them to me.

Are there any steps I should do in InDesign to strip any formatting previously done to each url prior to formatting it for use in ID?

I've become a little comfortable with the hyperlinks panel and jumping from there to the options available in the top right hand corner of that panel. But, I’m not having success achieving the results using the various help files in InDesign.

To experiment, I’ve copied and pasted some text that includes some non-live urls from a previous issue I put together. All text I work with comes to me the way I described above. So, one thing that is happening, I don’t understand at all is when I try to make a couple of the urls live, it is opening the file of the issue where I got the text copy to paste in my sample doc (to experiment). Why is it linked to that other file? How can I “detach” it? I have to fix these issues so the printing company doesn’t have to deal with them.

Continuing; I can’t figure out what is going wrong with these steps: My “traffic lights” are all gray BUT when I click the name in the Hyperlinks panel, they do open up the correct website.

I set up a Character Style to add an underline, but there are none.

I don’t know if this is relevant, and I don’t understand it: if you want the source text to be generated from the destination text, insert a cross-reference instead of adding a hyperlink. See Cross-references.

This is the info I’ve been following from the ID online instructions:

Open the Hyperlinks panel

• Choose Window > Interactive > Hyperlinks.

Sort hyperlinks in the Hyperlinks panel

1. Choose Sort from the Hyperlinks panel menu, and then choose any of the following:

 Manually

Displays the hyperlinks in the order in which they were added to the document.

By Name

Displays the hyperlinks in alphabetical order.

By Type

Displays the hyperlinks in groups of similar type.

Create hyperlinks

You can create hyperlinks to pages, URLs, text anchors, email addresses, and files. If you create a hyperlink to a page or text anchor in a different document, make sure that the exported files appear in the same folder.

Note:

To show or hide hyperlinks, choose View > Extras > Show Hyperlinks or Hide Hyperlinks.

Note:

Hyperlinks are included in exported Adobe PDF files if Hyperlinks is selected in the Export Adobe PDF dialog box in InDesign. Hyperlinks are included in the exported SWF file if Include Hyperlinks is selected in the Export SWF dialog box.

Create a hyperlink to a web page (URL)

You can use several different methods to create hyperlinks to URLs. When you specify a URL, you can use any valid Internet resource protocol: http://, file://, ftp://, or mailto://.

You can also use the Buttons feature to link to web pages. (See Buttons.)

Note:

In InDesign, hyperlinks are automatically formatted with the Hyperlink style - underline blue text.

1. SELECT THE HTTPS://INFORMATION.COM (EXAMPLE)

1. Right-click the selected text,-URL frame, or graphic, and then choose 

1. Hyperlinks > Edit Hyperlinks. The New Hyperlink dialog box is displayed.

1. Specify an appropriate URL destination:

• In the URL text box, type or paste the URL name (such as http://www.adobe.com). Ensure that the URL option is selected in the Link To drop-down.
  -OR-

• Select a previously added URL from the URL drop-down. The hyperlink appearance is the same as that used in the previous URL.

1. Set or change the appearance settings in the Appearance tab.
   Provide the alternate text in the Accessibility tab. This will appear when the image is not displayed.
2. Click OK.

Note:

If a URL hyperlink isn’t working in the exported PDF, there may be a problem with the hyperlink being a “Shared Destination”. Deselect the Shared Hyperlink Destination checkbox, and then click OK.

You have no idea how much I appreciate your help  -Debbie

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Not much to add to your rundown except to say that hyperlinks in ID are, overall, a bit more fussy and complex than I like. All of the features and aspects have a purpose; I just think the application could be a bit more hierarchical so that handling that simple 90% of links was easier while still allowing us to drill down into the more advanced aspects. But those levels are all a bit jumbled together.

And if you're not doing so, the Hyperlinks pane and its main menu (hamburger icon) contain ALL the link management commands and sub-menus; using it helps concentrate all the work in one place instead of separate menus and clicks.

The only thing I can suggest is to make sure anything you paste is as plain text as possible, not dragging any leftover Word markers or code with it. I think the "Paste Without Formatting" option only works for cut and paste from within ID. It's a bit tedious, but you might consider cutting from Word, pasting into a plain text editor (like Notepad on Windows), then cutting and pasting that into ID. Or, right-click and remove hyperlink in Word before you cut.

There are probably some paths to streamline those flows.

[HHSDebbie]

You mentioning that the hyperlinks in ID are, overall, a bit more fussy and complex than you like, helps me understand partially why I'm having issues. I've been using InDesign since the beginning of it (and previously Pagemaker, etc) so most of ID I don't have any issues with. 

Because of all the character formatting (diacriticals), can't unformat the WORD files, so I think I'll need to strip out the urls completely before I cut and paste the WORD files into ID. Then retype them in ID. What a hassle, but then they should work. Right? If you think this is NOT a good idea, please would you let me know? THANK YOU, THANK YOU.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Yes, it's nice to know "it's not just you." It's a powerful feature, especially if you have to manage a lot or a variety of links, but it could be better organized.

If pasting through a plain-text editor doesn't preserve the text formatting (characters) you do need — and it seems like there must be a tool that does recognize accented characters and diacriticals at a pure-text level, somewhere! — then you might do it just with the short string of text containing or surrounding each link.

A Word macro to completely strip all hyperlinks and remove any other underlying formatting, perhaps while doing something useful like applying a character style to highlight them and thus give a search and formatting handle in ID, seems like a workable aid here. Turn them all "dead and red" until you're done, then set the character style to black... etc.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

All of the advice above is very good. Here's some more things that might help retain your content when it's imported into InDesign.

1. RE: diacriticals and accented characters...

If the original Word file uses a Unicode/OpenType font, then all characters should import into InDesign just fine. No need for manual formatting of the text at all. That means you could strip the Word document of all formatting and still retain the characters you need.

Example: résumé and façade in Word should end up as résumé and and façade in InDesign — whether you copy/paste or import the text or strip its formatting — as long as the fonts in both Word and InDesign are Unicode/OpenType and have those accented glyphs. Most fonts today do have the common glyphs for European languages, but accented glyphs from other languages require a font designed for each language.

References:

• See all of the language variations for Noto at https://fonts.google.com/?query=noto
• View the glyph sets for Noto sans at https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans/glyphs?query=noto  Scroll down the page to view all of its glyph sets.
• The Unicode code charts:  Each unique glyph (letters, accented letters, symbols, punctuation, etc.) of the world's languages has been assigned a unique Unicode Code Point (4-5 digits). That allows é (Code Point 00E9) to be retained as é, regardless of the font, formatting, or software. See https://www.unicode.org/charts/
• Microsoft's Calibri, Cambria, and Segoe font families are very good for Unicode and contain many glyphs.

From your description @HHSDebbie, it seems that your authors may or may not consistently use Unicode/OpenType fonts or ensure that they are using the correct Unicode glyph/code point for the accented characters. Although Microsoft updated to Unicode 23 years ago (2000), some of their fonts are still old ASCII and use different codes for those unique glyphs — glyph codes that get lost when the text is imported into InDesign.

Suggestion: Is it possible to alert users about fonts and Unicode characters? We do this in our Word classes, and also train our clients how to use them. Not difficult. Once you know the Unicode code point, Alt + x will produce the correct glyph. Example: In Word, type   r00E9 Alt X  to produce ré

2. RE: hyperlinks...

There are 3 parts of a hyperlink and they're all affecting your project.

1. The visible text on the page, aka what the user sees.
2. The formatting of the text. Usually blue and underlined, but none of that is required for it to function.
3. The encoding of the hyperlink that holds the URL information or points to the anchor somewhere else in the document.

Knowing this, a Word-to-InDesign workflow always works better when the Word document does the critical formatting for hyperlinks.

In Word, the software automatically places a character formatting style around the URL or email address. It's named Hyperlink and it formats the text as blue and underlined. Look for it in Word's Styles Panel. The user doesn't have to do anything to have this happen: Word's AI identifies common constructions (http://xxx, www.xxx,  and whosie@floosie.com) and applies the character style formatting (#2 above), as well as the hyperlink encoding (#3).

In InDesign, IF the hyperlinks are correctly created in Word and then imported (not copy-pasted) into InDesign, the hyperlinks are correctly encoded and formatted with InDesign's default hyperlink character style.  Word's original Hyperlink character style is automatically mapped to InDesign's version.

And you can adjust everything about InDesign's Character hyperlink style:

1. Change the font and color.
2. Change the underline thickness and offset distance in Underline Options.

Control the underline of hyperlinks.

As folks commented above, whatever you can do in Word to correct the document will have a tremendous payback when it's imported into InDesign.

Whether you decide to either strip out all formatting and encoding in Word and then redo it in InDesign, or do it all in Word and easily bring it into InDesign, that's your choice. Do what's best for your workflow.

But one thing that makes this work is Unicode/OpenType fonts in Word and InDesign to ensure the glyphs transfer intact, and the correct Unicode code point for each diacritical, accented character, or symbol glyph. We usually teach authors how to do this in a 15-30 minute online training session. Not. Rocket. Science.  And not painful to do, either!

If you're in government or academia, then Unicode is required to meet Section 508 and ADA requirements for accessibility. Other governments have laws that have the same requirement.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Once you know the Unicode code point, Alt + x will produce the correct glyph. Example: In Word, type   r00E9 Alt X  to produce ré

You're pretty much the last person I'd question on any of this, and all of the above is spot on (of course). But, gee, professor...

Is it maybe a bit more broadly useful to teach Alt codes, either in place of Word Unicode entry or as an alternative for the common glyphs? I find having memorized Alt-0233 for é much more useful, in nearly every app, than the specifics of how Word does it. I probably use Alt-0151 fifty times a day — because I like the specifics of an em-dash doing an em-dash job and am not always in an app with convenient dash-keys coded. (Or one of my hardware macro keys, which I hit when available but these days I am often KVM'ed into a client system instead.)

Just a quibble. You may shush me. 🙂

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

@James Gifford—NitroPress, no way I'm going to shush you.

I'll join you!

You described a problem with the computer software industry that should have been addressed back in 2000, when the industry agreed to adopt the Unicode character encoding system. 23 years later, and all we have are a handful of keyboard shortcuts that are programmed by individual software — and each program has different shortcuts for the same glyph!

And those built-in software keyboard shortcuts may or may not insert a true Unicode characters. Some are still programmed to insert ASCII characters — even after 23 years of Unicode. è pazzesco!

Alt Characters (Alt key + #### on the numeric keyboard) were standardised for most common programs on the Windows platform (not on Macs). But they work only for ASCII encoding, not Unicode. They were universal keyboard shortcuts in pre-2000, pre-Unicode days:

• ASCII fonts have only about 220 glyphs, which was the maximum available on any PostScript or old TrueType font. (Although old fonts had 256 glyph codes, about 30+ were space and line controls and other control characters for programming, not used, generally, by us users.) 
• Alt Characters weren't dedicated to specific glyphs. Different fonts — like old versions of Symbol, Zapf Dingbats, or Wingdings — mapped the same number to completely different glyphs. Look at the antiquated chart of several fonts that's attached. Gah! Whatta mess. And note its copyright date. Holy cannoli.
• Unicode fonts, on the other hand, can have up to 65,536 glyphs — just a wee bit more glyphs than ASCII!
• So we run out of key combinations available with any standard numeric keyboard, even if we add in Control, Shift, Option.  Unicode codepoints are hexadecimal with ABCDEF letters used in codepoints (0123456789 + ABCDEF = 16 bits of data). I don't have a hexadecimal keypad on my keyboard 😞  How can I type the Unicode codepoint for a copyright symbol (00A9 ©) on my right-side keypad?  Gah! I'm stuck.

Possible solution would require coordination by all our software companies for both platforms to develop a universal set of keyboard shortcuts to access any Unicode character. Microsoft's Alt-X method works for any of the codepoints and it doesn't interfere with any other keyboard shortcuts defined for other functions, such as Control + c for copy. But at this time it works only in Microsoft programs on Windows. Mac-ers are out of luck, as well as anyone using any Adobe program on either operating system.  Those users must access a glyph chart in their program to locate and insert the Unicode codepoint.

That's a royal PITA which affects most of us at some time in our workflows, and Unicode is an underlying problem for the original poster who's just trying to do a "simple" task: import MS Word content with diacriticals and active hyperlinks into an InDesign layout.

The lack of "easy" Unicode causes errors and slowdowns for anyone moving content between Macs and Windows programs;  between word processing  files and desktop publishing;  converting anything to XML, HTML, EPUB, or accessible documents;  extracting data from database/CMS systems and publishing in any format ... basically, at any point in our publishing workflows. (And let's see what happens to the fake ellipsis in the previous sentence: the 3 periods did not convert to a true ellipsis (… Unicode 2026), and is just 3 periods that could split apart when lines rewrap.)

James, I too use Alt Characters for common characters, like Alt 151 for the em dashes in this post. Too hard to retrain my motor memory after decades of using them! And I'm lost on a laptop or Mac small keyboard that lack the right-side numeric keypads. It's so painful!

Some programs don't swap the ASCII Alt 151 to the Unicode 2014 codepoint and it becomes a missing glyph: but I'm grateful for those that do the swap. It would help all users if more programs (and operating systems) would do that, at least for our common ASCII Alt Character glyphs from the 1980s.

I don't know where and how to start moving the industry on this. Will welcome any ideas from anyone who reads this post.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I should have guessed we were on much the same page here.

Besides all of the above, my particular peeve is Microsoft's SAA keyboard layout (Standard Application Architecture... as long as you're running MS Applications). In my decades of trying to get Word users to improve their techniques, the ones who insisted on things like Shift-F9 to save and F12 to print (or whatever — can't remember the actual keys for the life o' me) were the hardest to move forward to even thing like Ctrl-C/X/V/P.

I just did a complex Word project for an engineering firm that needed to streamline its reporting procedures... and of the fifteen things I built into the new Word-based doc model, they rejected about half "because we have limited time to retrain our consultants." One of those situations where a half-hour Zoom training plus a cheat sheet would save... hundreds to thousands of man-hours a year. Sigh.

But it's all cyclical, as you know. One week, along comes someone trying to get all players to sing Kumbaya, and maybe even makes some progress... and then Bill or Steve or Tim or Larry or godhelpus Elon has a bright new idea... and off (the track) we go again. It's the Tandy/NEC/Digital era all over again.

Did not know there are mapping issues beween Alt-0151 and Unicode, though. I thought the latter preserved most lower glyph mappings. Must investigate.

Alt-P. Ctrl-P. Alt-Shift P. ...oh, that's right, click Post.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Did not know there are mapping issues beween Alt-0151 and Unicode, though. I thought the latter preserved most lower glyph mappings. Must investigate.

By @James Gifford—NitroPress

Unicode did indeed map all (or most) of the ASCII character set to Unicode.

The problem is the keyboard shortcuts.

Software companies were supposed to change the characters when folks used the old KB shortcuts, so that Alt+151 would indeed convert it to U+2214 on the fly.

It took eons for Adobe and Microsoft to swap the encoding. We test periodically because accessibility standards require strict Unicode. Example, it's only in the past few years that we can trust InDesign's right-click / Insert character to gives us Unicode versions rather than ASCII.

And bullets in MS Word still use Symbol font character #183 rather than U+2022 from the OpenType font used in body text.

These companies really have to complete the change to Unicode. It's 23 years already!