Placing a word file in indesign - after a reference there is additional text

[christyr77693249]

This only happens after a reference - is it a word problem or the settings in Indesign?

[maxwithdax]

Looks like track changes might have been still enabled in the word doc. Open your word doc and accept all changes and stop tracking. try re-importing the word doc and see if the text remains.

-Dax

[Jongware]

christyr77693249  wrote

…

This only happens after a reference - is it a word problem or the settings in Indesign?

Technically, neither. It is a problem inside InDesign -- a bug, not a setting.

The problem here is that InDesign is not really very good at importing Word files. A major pain, because there aren't really very much formatted text formats it can read to start with!

What you are seeing here is part of internal data of a cross-reference manager. Word itself can handle this just fine; the cross-reference manager chooses what parts of this data gets shown in the short reference in text and the full reference in the reference list at the end. Word even does not need the actual plug-in to be able to show the correct text. The data itself contains fields which indicate what text gets shown where (although of course, to adjust such a reference you'd need the actual plug-in).

On importing such a file, InDesign is supposed to silently strip all of that invisible extra data and retain only the text-to-be-shown -- again, what should be shown is well defined in the Word file. But Adobe managed to mess this up. (In case you're wondering, they should be able to fix it by reading the documentation, such as in Office Open XML (OOXML) - Word Processing - Fields. You might want to tell them at Adobe InDesign Feedback.)

One cannot predict in advance if any, and if so, which, fields will be processed badly, and under what circumstances. Sometimes a plain re-saving the document in Word magically fixes things (akin to InDesign's "Save As" clearing up routine), but then again, sometimes it does not. Also, sometimes re-saving fixes this part of the import process but reveals problems in other areas.

Part of my workflow in dealing with Word files has been for a long time to always flatten all fields to plain text (How to remove fields in a Word document​​). This removes the hidden data and the variable fields, and replaces them with only the actual text that is supposed to show. (It's also an irreversible action, so don't accidentally overwrite your original file.)

[christyr77693249]

Thanks maxwithdax: Have accept all changes and stop tracking in the word file - but it did not help.

But it got me in the right track, have saved the word file as rtf and the tekst after the references has gone.

Thnks for the quick reply!

[christyr77693249 · Accepted solution]

This works as well

Part of my workflow in dealing with Word files has been for a long time to always flatten all fields to plain text (How to remove fields in a Word document). This removes the hidden data and the variable fields, and replaces them with only the actual text that is supposed to show. (It's also an irreversible action, so don't accidentally overwrite your original file.)

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Vote for this bug fix at InDesign User Voice, Import Cross-References from MS Word – Adobe InDesign Feedback 

Voting is the only way to get this bug on Adobe's to-do list.

And as they say, vote early and often!

[aandreiza]

thanks so much for this well explained response, i've also tried all the various place/import options without success, lost all and everything asif saved in plain txt format..... Would you perhaps be able to tell whether the author of such Word document can suppress (switch off) cross reference manager data .... why do other authors seem able to not have it in their manuscripts although they have similar style references in text.... would a request to the author to "disable cross reference manager" be understandable or make sense to them (if i understand correct, it will not take anything away from their document text - their visible text is the only to be published after pdf'd via InDesign). I've tried saving the file to different types, plain text is fine, it rids those irritations, but also all font options italics, bold etc etc etc which is no good. What i'll also try (although i might have allready, like i said i've tried so many options/variations to get around this issue - i documented it orderly in a "helpfile" but unable to retrieve that now) is to save to RTF(hoping this will strip internal background intelligence), then save to PDF, then copy & paste the pdf text into blank Word document (try place again in InDesign) and/or even copy & paste directly into InDesign.

[pedrolopezandradas]

As I come here from time to time to remember how to remove fields or cross-links in a word document in order to move it to indesign, and as the guide website is no longer available, I leave here the solution for MS Word:

1. Select the text to process (or select all with Cmd+A on Mac and Ctrl+A on Windows).

2. Press Cmd+6 on Mac or Ctrl+6 on Windows

3. Save