Text coming in with wrong style

[annegard]

Even though I have a specific paragraph style selected as my default (which works fine when I create a text box and start typing), recently whenever I use File, Place to bring in text, it comes in as "Normal" style instead, and often it is also formatted as hyperlinked. Any ideas? I can see that the style I want is selected in the Paragraph Styles tab, before I choose File, Place, but it still comes in formatted as Normal. I have searched the Help and not found anything helpful.

[Barb Binder · Accepted solution]

Two options:

1. You can use style mapping, to map Word's default Normal style to the one you want. When you go to File > Place, click on Show Import Options, and use Customize Style Import > Style Mapping to map the Word style(s) to the InDesign style(s).
   
   
2. Alternatively, just delete Normal in an existing document, and map the text that came in tagged as Normal to the appropriate tag.

Not sure why it is hyperlinked, but try this first and let us know if this takes care of it. The hyperlink may be a character style that needs to be removed.

[annegard]

Unfortunately neither of these solutions worked for me.

1. The text came in with the style I wanted, but modified (it had the + next to the style name, and was not justified correctly). When I clicked the button to remove the modifications, it converted it to hyperlinked text.

2. I deleted the Normal style, and replaced it with the one I want to use, but as soon as I placed more text, it recreated the Normal style.

[Barb Binder]

Yes, unless you map Normal to the desired style, that will happen every time. First place all the text, then delete Normal. Or plan on deleting it multiple times.

Or under import options, place it as unformatted text.

[annegard]

I've just tried importing text from different sources, all Word docs but from different places, and they are coming in all different styles, not just Normal, and none of them in my default style. So just deleting Normal and mapping it to my default will not help in those cases. And anyway, the way my job works, I can't import all my text and then delete Normal to convert all of them. The text comes in small chunks that have to be dealt with indivdually before I can bring in the next piece. I've just been doing Select All for each item, and changing the style, but it takes time and I should not need to do this.

My main question is, why did this suddenly start happening? I have been doing the same things in InDesign for the past 3 years or so, with no style problems. This just started happening a couple of weeks ago. Why would InDesign suddenly start ignoring my default style? My colleagues are not having this problem.

[amaarora]

Hi,

Although Barbs suggestion should have helped you, but since it does not you now have two options:

1. Either figure out and search what setting have you changed. The issue you are explaining is clearly a machine specific issue since your colleagues are not having the problem

2. Clean you cache and preferences and start afresh.Troubleshooting 101: Replace, or "trash" your InDesign preferences

-Aman

[annegard]

I have not changed any settings. And deleting the Preferences file didn't help. I guess I'll just have to keep on selecting each new piece of text and changing the style. It's annoying, but I'm getting fast at it.

[Jongware]

For that Hyperlink stye, there is another possibility: it may be selected as the default for all of your new text frames! Make sure nothing is selected and see what the Character Style palette shows. If it's anything else than "[None]", that is used as default, and you should set it to "[None]".

In fact, the same is true for the Paragraph Style palette – if you create a new text frame, it also picks the selected one (*) – but you will only see that when typing into it; an imported style will always be used. (**)

(*) Unless (behold, the myriad ways to work with InDesign) you specifically instruct InDesign to always start a Basic Text Frame with a certain style. Then that one will be the default.

(**) Unless (see (*)) you specifically instruct InDesign to ignore the original styles when placing text. That's Barb's post above. Note that InDesign, when honoring the original styles, will also honor any overrides on it! That may be why you get the right style but not the right formatting.

[ArteRodarte]

After having spent MANY hours trying to solve a similar issue (all of my placed text was defaulting to an italics character style I had defined), examining settings over and over, and researching online, this finally solved my issue. Thanks for mentioning it!!!!

[vinny38]

Hi

As Barb point it out, it looks like you have a unwanted imported Word character style called "Hyperlink" that is applied to some of your text.

Please note that Microsoft Word automatically applies this character style whenever it detects an url or an e-mail. (note that you can disable this in Word Options)

So, while mapping your styles, look for this "Hyperlink" character style and apply [none] to it.

Basically, I would recommend not leaving any Word style un-mapped. If you didn't anticipate the use of a style (i.e. "exponent"), you still can create a new corresponding Indd style while using the mapping feature.

Let us know if it solves your problem.

If not, can you provide screenshots of both paragraph and character styles panels after the placing, without doing any mapping, so we could check the Word Styles?

2. I deleted the Normal style, and replaced it with the one I want to use, but as soon as I placed more text, it recreated the Normal style.

Do you mean you place several Word documents in your Indd? In this case, it's normal behavior I guess. You have to do the mapping every time you place a .Doc

Additional question: what text format do you save your Word files to? .doc, .docx, .rtf?

[annegard]

Yes, my documents contain many Word (.doc) files. I do newspaper layout, and have to place many articles, which all come from Word.

Character Style was set to None.

I have now mapped every Word style to my preferred default style, and saved that preset as my default. It has kind of worked. Files now come in with my preferred style, but modified so that the justification is not correct. I click on the button to remove the modification and then it is fine (no more hyperlinks, so that problem mysteriously disappeared on its own.)

So my problems are mostly fixed - thanks. I still have to remove the style modification each time I bring in a Word doc, but at least that is not as time-consuming as selecting each new piece of text and changing the style.