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anderss4670316
Participant
May 7, 2020
Answered

Importing Word-files (.docx) with index-markers

  • May 7, 2020
  • 3 replies
  • 3167 views

Hi Im a typographer, using Indesign for making books for a Publisher in Norway. I always get styled Word-files from my customer for my books. Often large Word-files, and often with Word index-markers. This works mostly ok, but now and then the index-markers are not imported into Indesign. Knowing this, I have started to check if the markers pops up in Indesign, just after importing the Word-file. A routine I can live with, but also easy to forget. What is worse is that sometimes only some of the index-markers are imported, not all of them. I have made several books, and found out when I started to work with the index, a lot of index-words were missing. Sometimes i can solve this with saving the .docx-files as .rtf or .doc. But this doesn't always help it either, and finding this out after already have made a 1000-page book, is too late. Has anyone else had any similar issues? Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.6, Indesign 15.0.2.

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    Correct answer Peter Kahrel

    InDesign's Word import filter has always been flaky, and despite numerous complaints/bug reports/enhancement requests, the filters remain feeble. Footnotes often don't appear, words with some styling applied and that start with a special character almost always lose that special character -- that's just two of the sad list.

    You can voice your problem or join a chorus here: InDesign user voice

     

    P.

    3 replies

    Dan Greyhound
    Dan Greyhound
    Inspiring
    August 2, 2023

    Yep, this just happened to me. It's never happened before and I never thought to check that every single marker was present and correct before doing the design and layout. The least Adobe could do is give you an error message saying that there is a problem.

    Jongware
    Community Expert
    JongwareCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 7, 2020

    I don't trust InDesign's Word Import to accurately place an "a" where there is a "b" in the original. For most content I need to massage a Word file into a slightly more reliable shape by running a VBA script that cleans out the Usual Suspects.

     

    It should be do-able to write a VBA script that converts Word's index markers into plain text (clearly marked with some code or another). After importing, another script on the InDesign side would then convert the text markers back into actual Index Entries.

     

    (Just throwing out the basic idea -- I don't think I have the time to actually write these two scripts and test them against a bewildering number of possible problems.)

    A
    anderss4670316Author
    Participant
    May 7, 2020

    Thanks for the input.

    P
    Community Expert
    Peter KahrelCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    May 7, 2020

    InDesign's Word import filter has always been flaky, and despite numerous complaints/bug reports/enhancement requests, the filters remain feeble. Footnotes often don't appear, words with some styling applied and that start with a special character almost always lose that special character -- that's just two of the sad list.

    You can voice your problem or join a chorus here: InDesign user voice

     

    P.

    A
    anderss4670316Author
    Participant
    May 7, 2020

    Thanks Peter. I will do that.

     

    Best regards.

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