"Placing" a Word document and its footnotes

[Don34862646jbr5]

I'm new to InDesign, and I am trying to get a long Word document with its footnotes into ID. I have created a new ID document. My next step (I think) is to Place the Word document in the new ID document. I do that with <Shift>-Click to I don't get overset text. The Word document then appears in ID, but without its footnotes. I'm sure I'm doing something fundamental wrong and should be embarrassed. Can someone help me out? (Use small words; I was never very bright to begin with, and I'm pretty old now.)

Many thanks.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

After you click CTRL+D - you need to "activate" IMPORT OPTIONS:

Then - make sure FOOTNOTES is checked:

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Using the import options menu will help a lot. I just wanted to let you know that "it's not just you"; the Word import process often makes even the sharpest and most experienced among us feel like thumb-fingered newbies. 🙂

It's... erratic. Leave things at that.

[Don34862646jbr5 · Accepted solution]

Someone (not me) found a solution that I received by word of mouth. Some .docx files import with footnotes; some don't. I cannot find any distinction between the two. For those files that do not import footnotes, open them in Word and save them as .doc files instead of docx. Then place the .doc file in ID, and the footnotes come in without a problem.

Disclaimer: I do not know why this works, but I have tested it. It's kludgy, but it's only a minor kludge.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Well, to unpack all that, both Word and ID are prone to file bloat and corruption. The solution for both is to save to an intermediate format and then re-open: in ID, save to IDML and then open and resave as INDD under a new name; in Word, the most effective method is to save as RTF, then open and save as either DOC or DOCX. In both cases, excess data (mostly due to undo info and image metadata) is purged, shrinking the files dramatically, and the structure is rewritten, often fixing many small things, especially anything to do with links. Some have better luck with a direct RTF import to InDesign, some with DOC, and for many a clean DOCX file works just as well.

Footnotes are not usually problematic. But end notes are almost always fragile and fussy.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Don34862646jbr5 

DOCX - and DOC - are both proprietary formats owned by Microsoft - anyone trying to create import / reader - will have to do reverse engineering.

With DOC - Adobe engineers probably done much better job than with DOCX - even when DOCX is just a ZIPed archive full of plain-text XML files.

Sometimes RTF helps - as it's open standard - but not always.