placing a word doc into indesign using the preserve styles and formatting doesnt place the whole doc

[kate_elizabeth_bridge0931]

Hi All, 

I am trying tp place my chapters into my indesign template for my PhD thesis. The chapters are written in word, and use paragraph and character styles.

When I go to place the word doc into indesign, if i use style mapping or even import styles, then for some reason when I go to place the text, it will only place the first few paragraphs from the word document? (yes im holding down shift when I place so it flows over).

If I place without preserving any of the formatting- so just as 'plain text', then it will read the whole word doc.... but with each chapter being 10 000 words, and having multiple section headings, and character formats etc, I reeeeallly dont want to have to go through and manually change it if I dont have to... 

Im hoping I have missed something glaringly obvious from all the online tutorials and forums I have followed! (Also I tried resetting preferences and that didnt seem to make any difference either). 

thanks in advanced from a very strung out person!

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS · Accepted solution]

Try these ideas:

• Try using a primary text frame instead of using the shift-place.
• Select all your text after importing and remove any overrides.
• Make sure any of your para and char styles don't have no break selected or any keep options. (You can turn them on again after import.)
• Search your Word document for any break characters such as a section break. 
• Save as RTF then back to DOCX, then try to import again.

[kate_elizabeth_bridge0931]

After going through every bullet point and nothing working, I then went back through these points with my 'resaved' RTF to DOCX, and after importing removing any overrides and it worked! 

THANK YOU SO SO MUCH you have saved me. 

[Peter Spier]

Any possibility that the "missing" part of the text is actually showing as overset (red plus sign in the last threaded frame, lower right corner)?

If it is, the put your cursor after the last character showing and press Ctrl/Cmd + Y to pen in Story Editor and have a look at waht is happening after that point that is keeping the next portion from fitting on the next line. Often caused by a string of non-breaking spaces between words and no hyphenation allowed, for example.

[Laura Brady]

It's very likely that something in your Word file is set to go wider than the measure of your text box in InDesign. Check right indents, tables, images — that kind of thing. One way to check for this is to increase the size of the frame on the last page of the document to see if things snap in to focus, so to speak. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@kate_elizabeth_bridge0931

As others said - there is something in your text, that's way bigger than the size of your last TextFrame - piece of text or graphic or table.

If you have WORD installed - and not everything is correctly styled - you can use macro that I've co-crated: 

https://www.id-tasker.com/uploads/WordStyle.zip

It will convert Bolds, Italics, Sub/Super Script, Underline and combinations to CharStyles. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Just to add to some similar suggestions: it's very common for a Word file, especially one with any 'complex' formatting such as end notes and tables, to jam on import. Some number of pages will load adn then it will stop.

As noted, look for an overflow indicator on the last page. Add a document page after it. Click on the overflow indicator, then click with the loaded cursor in the new, added page. Many times, that will force the flow to complete. You may have to do it more than once if you have the usual complicated variations something like a dissertation contains.

But think of this as a cyclical effort as well. You may find that it's easier to go back to (a copy of) your Word file and do all kinds of cleanup and format fixing, then reimport it, until you get a truly acceptable result you can use to expediently reformat and finish. Sometimes it's easier to fix problems in ID; sometimes it's easier to go back to Word and make wholesale fixes, then start over.