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Answered

Spaces Disappear When Importing Word Doc Into InDesign

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
January 9, 2017
7 replies
9003 views

When importing a Word doc (MS Word 365 for Mac, El Capitan) into InDesign CC 2015, all of the spaces disappear - causing all of the text to run together.

The spaces in the Word doc we start with look fine, but when we import (not copy and paste, but import) it into InDesign, the spaces aren’t included.

Does anyone know why this happens and what we can do to stop it? Thanks!

Correct answer karina127

This was happening to me when I imported a Word doc into a blank InDesign file. Turns out the text in the Word doc was justified. I left aligned everything and reimported with no issues 🙂

karina127Correct answer

New Participant

This was happening to me when I imported a Word doc into a blank InDesign file. Turns out the text in the Word doc was justified. I left aligned everything and reimported with no issues 🙂

Rishabh_Tiwari

Community Manager

Hi,

Thank you for reaching out and sharing the solution. I am sure it will help other community members. In addition to this solution if anyone else experiences similar issues with files on two different computers, please ensure you have the same fonts installed.

Thanks
Rishabh

L

Laubender

Community Expert

"If anyone is struggling to get the file to import after doing the above, saving it down to lower version of ms word helped clear out any remaining issues that popped up."

"This comment should be #1 on this conversation."

Hm. I disagree. Why?

Well, the original source of the formatted text of our OP BNO-Kofi Bonner was not a Word file.

The word file was done by exporting texts from a PDF using Acrobat Pro DC.

If someone can see a solution in saving a Word file to a previous version, the issue is a different one and should be discussed in a new thread.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

J E L

Community Expert

That's a very important distinction point, @Laubender. Thanks for adding it here!

S

seaj0725

New Participant

Hi!

I don't know if you've solved this already, because I also had a hard time in looking for solutions. But I just want to share what I did that might work as well with the others.

-Open the Word file
-Find and replace all the spaces with space, then save the Word file.
-Place the Word file in Indesign.

It works. 🙂

caseycpwprint

New Participant

Thank you so much for this, saved me a lot of work!

If anyone is struggling to get the file to import after doing the above, saving it down to lower version of ms word helped clear out any remaining issues that popped up.

BNO-Kofi BonnerAuthor

Participating Frequently

The Word file is a .docx, and here is a screen shot of the InDesign import settings:

BNO-Kofi BonnerAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks for the suggestions - but the spaces are actually not there. Here are two screen shots: 1. the InDesign doc with some of the spaces not appearing (story mode), and 2. the original Word doc with the spaces intact.

Frans v.d. Geest

Community Expert

Very strange indeed. What are your InDesign import setting, keep or remove formatting on place? And: is the source .doc or .docx? Maybe you can share the Word file so we can have a look?

BNO-Kofi BonnerAuthor

Participating Frequently

Here is the Word doc.

https://transfers.bnoinc.com/_8txZL66jPh0kcR

L

Laubender

Community Expert

To proof if there are no spaces do one of the following:

1. Copy some text to the clipboard.
Paste it to a text editor.

2. Select some text and open InDesign's Story Editor window.
( Keyboard shortcut is cmd+y on a Mac )

Do "Show Hidden Characters" to be sure.

Regards,
Uwe

Frans v.d. Geest

Community Expert

My guess would be that there is a default Paragraph and/or Text style that gets applied that has very very narrow tracking applied. What happend if you select al text, hold down Alt_Shift and click on the Basic Paragraph style in the Paragraph style panel? Does the 'reset' to the default font size etc. bring back the 'spaces'?

BNO-Kofi BonnerAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks - I think this is closest to the solution. We found that when a PDF is created, the exact kerning and tracking information must be discarded and the PDF renders it as well as it can.

When the PDF is converted to a Word doc, it re-interprets the kerning and tracking as font condensing (see “Fonts>Advanced”).

When a Word doc with text condensed this way is placed into InDesign, it apparently gets re-interpreted again, and if the text is condensed too much, InDesign ignores the “space” character and runs the words together, removing the space.

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