Place Word Document including bullet points

[UlfLaursen]

Hi Guys

I am on the latest InDesign on Mac, and the latest Word / office 365, and I have a problem.

I have a document with a lot of bullet points inside Word, but when I place it inside InDesign, I get a strange character instead. What am I doing wrong here, and can it be corrected?

I have tried to select the strange character to change / delete it, but I cannot.

[Barb Binder]

Hi @UlfLaursen:

That square typically means that it's a character that's not available to you in InDesign. You can replace these bullet characters by assigning bullets (or better yet, paragraph styles that include bullets) in InDesign. Find/Change can greatly speed up the process if you have a lot of these.

~Barb

[Lukas Engqvist]

It should be possible to change the character even if it is missing (in the selected font).
You can use find/change to find your bullet lists in the "Find Format" section.
In "Change Format" you can select the style of bullet you like (applying both character and paragraph style if you like, and this would be the preferred way to work.)
What is the character and font of the bullet in word? 

[UlfLaursen]

Thanks guys!

@Lukas Engqvist  It turns out that the font itself is Calibri, but the "bullet font" is Symbol.

Thanks.

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

ID should be able to find Symbol, but the correct fix here is to define ID styles for the bullet paragraphs and assign a bullet symbol there, one that is accessible. Even Calibri, if you're going to continue using that in the converted doc, has some nice little symbols. (Which you can tweak in size, position, color etc. using an associated Character Style.)

—

[Lukas Engqvist · Accepted solution]

You can replicate this in InDesign if you wish by setting the bullet to a character style with Symbol as its font. you msy also choose another bullet character.

(Here is a video on how you can change bullet https://youtu.be/zsnCIjYTxGE)

[Willi Adelberger]

Buld up the paragraph style with fonts and bullet points available.

With bullet points you should use a dedicated charcter style. When you build the bullets, choose the Character Style in the Bullet section of the Paragraph Style.

[UlfLaursen]

Thanks a lot again guys.

Since this document was not that big, I ended up making a new bullet point style inside word with the bullet of the calibri font, but I have learned a lot, thanks!! 🙂