Import selected word styled text into indesign

[fernhead]

HI there,

My team need to collate master biography content into a series of word documents, shareable with our PC colleagues.

Each Word document would comprise two paragraphs of text – one for online, and one for print. In each Word master document, the print paragraph will be copied from published, printed indesign artwork, and will retain all the indesign styles ready for reinsertion into future print artwork. So far so good.

To retain the text styling, for the next print job, I would need to import the text from Word using 'Place' from indesign. BUT, I do not seem to be able to select the copy I want to import (i.e. the styled paragraph content, not the online paragraph content within the Word document).

All I can do is pull the entire text in.

It is essential to retain the styles because this is heavily styled text, and multiple biog content would need to be inserted into the indd a/w each time (so copy/paste restyling is not an option).

I tried inserting a page break in Word, so that the 'print' paragraph appeared on the second page, hoping this would force the indd import options to give a choice over which page to insert. But it does not seem to recognize the Word page break.

Am I missing something? Am on OS Sierra, and have just updated to indd 2018.

The fall back of course is to keep two Word documents – one for online and one for print, but that negates what we're trying to do – i.e. keep a master file for everyone.

Thanks

[amaarora]

Hi,

There is no way i am aware of to import a text selection from word to InDesign.

You can import the entire word file and use conditional text in InDesign to segrate the content for print and publish

-Aman

[Jongware]

fernhead  wrote

To retain the text styling, for the next print job, I would need to import the text from Word using 'Place' from indesign. BUT, I do not seem to be able to select the copy I want to import (i.e. the styled paragraph content, not the online paragraph content within the Word document).

All I can do is pull the entire text in.

[...]

Am I missing something?

That has always been the case, from the very first version of InDesign on. (In case you believe it to be an InDesign specific "functional oversight": I don't think I have ever seen design software that allowed to import just a selection out of an external file.)

Copy/Paste, however, should be a feasible option. See the online help: Add text to frames in InDesign

Before you paste text, you can select All Information or Text Only under Clipboard Handling Preferences to determine whether the pasted text includes additional information such as swatches and styles.
(my emph.)

[AnneMarie Concepcion]

For me and most people I know, the answer here is to place the entire Word file, opting to retain formatting, and place it in a text frame on the pasteboard. Then copy/paste just the paragraph you need to the live doc, and delete the frame on the pasteboard.

This eliminates the step of having to locate and open the Word file in Word.

However I think you have a great feature request! It would be cool to be able to preview a Word file and select the text you want to place, or a preference to honor page breaks and page numbers in Word files, like how you can with ID and PDF files (but those are placed as images). Add the feature request here:

Adobe InDesign Feedback

One other solution I can think of would be to put one bio in one Excel worksheet and the other bio in a diff worksheet in the same spreadsheet. When you place an Excel file, you can specify which worksheet, choose "unformatted tabbed text" and it comes in as editable -- though unformatted -- text. You wanted to keep the formatting, of course, so that wouldn't work for this case. ;-(

AM

[MW Design]

This workflow all seems like pushing string, or perhaps another metaphor, the cart before the horse.

It is essential to retain the styles because this is heavily styled text, and multiple biog content would need to be inserted into the indd a/w each time (so copy/paste restyling is not an option).

Is it possible to see a screen shot of a sample bio with its heavily styled text inside of ID?

Mike

[Anna Lander]

What about importing the entire texts and then remove the online part (which also has its own style) using Find/Change window?

You can use wildcard Any Character in Find What field, nothing in Change To and the style for online fragments in Find Format field.

At least, it can help to clean your content from unwanted items quite quickly.

[Willi Adelberger]

Do you do the formatting of the text with Paragraph and Character Styles. If so, use the same names in Word and InDesign. Import the whole text and remove all manual overrides (which should never be, but it happens if a Word Document with styles is imported).

[dustinandrews@gmail.com]

Fernhead,

In Word 2016> Select the Word Art Box and copy it.

Open Powerpoint.

In Powerpoint 2016> Paste it into a new document. While hovering over the pasted in word art, go the edge or in proper terms "bounding box" and right click, scroll down to SAVE PICTURE AS. Pick your poison: GIF, JPEG, TIFF, PNG or a couple other options.

NOTE: You will have to open it in Photoshop or some equivalent to change the color space to CMYK.

You've just received 2 credit hours of graphic design classes where they only teach how things are supposed to be done, but don't give you any real world experience.

If you have issues with this let me know as of today 1-23-18 this method worked.

Best of luck!

P.S. - The feature you're requesting should be directed to Microsoft as they too have a monopoly on the industry and they do not play well with others. Word Art has been a thorn in printers sides since its inception. "Designers" who use word for setting up artwork should be taken to the wood shed. - Just my two cents. DA