Unable to import cross references from a MS Word source document

[matt loehrer]

I'm working on an iMac running Monterey 12.1 and using InDesign v. 17.0.1. I have a large MS Word document with many footnotes hyperlinked to external URLs, and also many internal cross references (if that's the proper term)—words that look like hyperlinks, and when you click on them, it takes you to another place in the document. When I placed my document in InDesign, the footnotes (external URLs) work properly. The cross references look like links—they are blue and underlined—but they don't actually do anything. I created a new InDesign document, imported a smaller file and exported to PDF without doing any formatting or anything, and the same thing happened. 

ALSO, when I select one of these non-working cross-references and right-click, the contextual menu does not offer "Hyperlinks" as an option, just "Interactive" and then "New Bookmark." Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

Matt 

[Mike Witherell]

As far as I know, this is not yet supported in InDesign.

For example, even though you can import/place a Word docx with index entries, they import as text only, and are not live. Their is no mention of cross-references in the Show Import Options for placing a Word docx.

See Microsoft Word Import Options

See also Import Cross References

[matt loehrer]

Hi Mike,

I did find a third party app (thanks to another poster here) called WordsFlow that appears to help the issue considerably—it links to the word doc and any updates made to that document can be applied to the indesign doc, so you can have people continue to work on the word doc and the indesign doc will update, but you can apply formatting in InDesign and it will retain that formatting. And it appears to preserve cross reference links. $300 but if you are a person who would use this, that could save hundreds of tedious hours. Worth considering.

Meanwhile, it would be great if Adobe would figure this out, or at least make it clear that InDesign doesn't support internal word CRs, because that was not at all readily apparent to me. 

Thank you

Matt