Placing Word Document - Font is lost

[sduttonusa]

When placing a Word document into Adobe InDesign, the font in the Word document is lost (replaced with Helvetica).  I just started having this problem . . . I've been placing the same Word document into the same InDesign document (the saved InDesign document from the last time I used it has the correct fonts) without any issues.  Any thoughts?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

The font would be controlled by the style mapping from Word to ID. When you place the Word file, be sure "Show Import Options" is checked in the import/file selection menu. Then check the Style settings at the bottom of that menu to see what style your (body? Normal?) font is being mapped to on import. Cancel the Place/import, and check the settings of that style in InDesign. It may have gotten overridden (and will have a + flag on the name to indicate that), or changed, and that's what's setting it to Helv.

That's the short form; ask away if you need more detailed steps.

[sduttonusa]

Thanks so much for the quick reply.  I've Shown Import Options . . . at the bottom, when choosing Custom, it is Normal to Normal.  This is the first time placing this particular Word document into this ID document, the font didn't just come through properly, so I'm not sure what I've got to change to get a proper import . . . sorry, I'm a bit of a novice with ID.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

In the InDesign document, be sure the Normal style is set to the characteristics you want. Even if it's worked before, any change to it will be reflected in newly imported documents — if the Word doc has black Times New Roman but the style in ID is pink Algerian... guess how the imported file will look. 🙂

Create some text in the ID file, apply Normal and clean up the style so that without overrides (no + on the style name), it appears as you want. Save the style and try the Place again; if the mapping is correct, the imported Normal text should take on the characteristics you've set.

(BTW, in working with Word imports I usually try to get rid of Normal, by starting with a reassignment to something like Body or Body Text. Normal is the aggressive default for Word and reappears even when you're reassigned all the document styles. By getting rid ot it in your ID layout, it allows you to spot un-assigned text in the doc and fix it, rather than be surprised by text that doesn't change when you, say, tweak the body style. Actually setting Normal to a color highlight like magenta can help you hunt it down and assign valid ID styles to that text.)