Importing from a word doc with dozens of paragraph styles

[MrZZY]

How do you guys handle importing word documents that have few styles, but dozens of 'override styles' - things that are not defined as styles but are clearly vaguely similar formatting?

I tried to use DTP Tools 'power styles' to assign them to actual styles, but every little nuanced change creates a new style and something like 60 different styles were generated.

I know I could just paste it in as plain text and brute force my way through after defining a smaller and more carefully chosen set of my own styles - but is there a better approach. I've got quite a few documents to work through that have been prepared in roughly the same way (and don't really expect them to be terribly consistent!).

Thanks!

[BobLevine]

The fact that these files have styles is an improvement over most of the Word files I've seen. Consider yourself fortunate.

Word is a very powerful application that most people have no clue how to use...but they use it anyway. I would imagine there are scripts that can help, but there's no way you're going to jump in without having some manual fixes.

[MrZZY]

Don't get me wrong Bob, I'm not looking to just open these all fixed as if by magic. I'm not afraid of hard work. I'm just opposed to slogging away at something when there's a far, far better way to do things that someone else has discovered or developed 🙂

[Kasyan Servetsky · Accepted solution]

Here's the script I wrote for my past job -- Protect local styling -- and a brief description of the process.

Also, at the bottom of the page, I posted a list of similar scripts.

[MrZZY]

Thanks Kasyan, I'll give it a go!

[MrZZY]

I'm just returning to thank Kasyan for this script, and to acknowledge the generosity of the wider scripting community for making their work on these things available, often free of charge. Kasyan's script was extremely helpful, lowering the stress of an otherwise brutally repetitive task. 

[Laubender]

Hi MrZZY,

if you ever feel the need to copy/paste from Word to InDesign reliably when it comes to formatting, see into:

RichPaste | Copy and Paste with Minimal Formatting [UPDATE]
Marc Autret, April 06, 2016
https://www.indiscripts.com/post/2015/10/richpaste-copy-and-paste-with-minimal-formatting

When it comes to pasting text from another document or application, InDesign provides two options, either keeping the original text attributes, fonts, styles (the full 'Paste' feature), or removing all attributes ('Paste without formatting'.) We also have tools and preferences in the field of style mapping, but on many occasions these features do not fit the need of dealing quickly with basic formatting problems. Here RichPaste comes to the rescue…

Regards,

Uwe Laubender

( ACP )