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Attroll
Attroll
Inspiring
February 3, 2025
Answered

Importing/Placing a Word document into InDesign without hyphenation

  • February 3, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 1364 views

I understand how to turn off hyphenation in my InDesign document and I have it turned off everywhere that I know of, and hyphenation is no longer anywhere in used or placed in my document.
However, when I place (Ctrl+D) a word document into my InDesign file it places it in there with hyphenation on. This is very annoying.
Is there a way to make it so that when placing a word document into InDesign it will go into it with hyphenation turned off?

As of right now it is always placed with hyphenation on and I have to manually highlight at the text once I import it and turn off hyphenation.

Correct answer Attroll

Thank you both Willi and Robert.

I figured it out.

 

Willi, it was not the Word document because I had hyphenation turned off.

 

Robert, I have the same paragraph styles in my Word document that I have in my InDesign document and they both have hyphenation turned off, so I thought. See below.

 

How I fixed it.

I noticed that two paragraph styles that were named the same thing.

One was the [Basic Paragraph] style that comes in every document and the other one I had was titled basic paragraph without the brackets. I don’t know how the one without the brackets ever got installed in my document.

The style without the brackets had hyphenation turned on. It appears that this was the one being used as the default when importing/placing the Word document.

I deleted the one without the brackets and replaced it with the one in brackets.

After I did that, everything is working correctly now.

 

Thank you both for a little insight and helping me.

 

Rick

2 replies

Robert at ID-Tasker
Robert at ID-Tasker
Legend
February 3, 2025

@Attroll

 

What is set in the applied ParaStyles?

 

Attroll
AttrollAuthorCorrect answer
Inspiring
February 3, 2025

Thank you both Willi and Robert.

I figured it out.

 

Willi, it was not the Word document because I had hyphenation turned off.

 

Robert, I have the same paragraph styles in my Word document that I have in my InDesign document and they both have hyphenation turned off, so I thought. See below.

 

How I fixed it.

I noticed that two paragraph styles that were named the same thing.

One was the [Basic Paragraph] style that comes in every document and the other one I had was titled basic paragraph without the brackets. I don’t know how the one without the brackets ever got installed in my document.

The style without the brackets had hyphenation turned on. It appears that this was the one being used as the default when importing/placing the Word document.

I deleted the one without the brackets and replaced it with the one in brackets.

After I did that, everything is working correctly now.

 

Thank you both for a little insight and helping me.

 

Rick

Dave Creamer of IDEAS
Community Expert
Dave Creamer of IDEASCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 3, 2025

Just a few after-the-fact notes...

  • If you remove Word formatting during inport, Word's hyphenation settings don't matter. 
  • If you match your Word styles to InDesign styles, your ID styles take over, including the hyphenation settings. However, even if all your styles are matched perfectly, there is always some "Word clutter" in the file. After import, select all and clear any overrides. 
  • The only way, baring some form of document coruption, you could get a "basic paragraph" style is if someone created it in ID or Word. The Word document would need the Word styles imported. 
  •  

 

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)
    Willi Adelberger
    Community Expert
    Willi AdelbergerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 3, 2025

    Turn off hyphenation in Word. Remove all manual hyphenation with find and replace in Word. That should always be done before importing any Word file into InDesign. 

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