InDesign and Word: Getting Them to Play Nice Together

Almost all of us use Word—or accept files from those who do. But sometimes getting text out of Word and into InDesign can be a pain. Formatting gets lost or comes out screwy. Footnotes disappear. And let’s not get started on tables. In this presentation, Rob Huddleston is coming down from Sacramento just to tell you everything you wanted to know about InDesign and Word, whether you were afraid to ask or not.

Find out how to create an InDesign document and a Word template that provide for seamless integration. It's the same process that both of Rob’s publishers use to suck his Word manuscripts into InDesign and have it automagically do the layout and formatting.

In addition, you will learn:

• Best practices for importing Word docs you didn’t create
• How to export text from an InDesign document to a Word doc with or without formatting (such as it may be)
• What to do if a customer makes changes by giving you a brand new Word doc
• Why do footnote numbers disappear when importing?
• Where does InCopy fit into this, if at all?
• How do I get images out of a Word doc for import to InDesign
• The easiest way to make Word tables into InDesign tables

Location and Parking

The Roxbury Community is located in the 11-acre Roxbury Memorial Park at the corner of Roxbury Dr. and Olympic Blvd. in Beverly Hills. Free parking is available in the small parking lot south of the Community Center and in the alley that runs along the west side of the Park. Parking is also available along Olympic Blvd. Street parking is also available, but please read all street parking signs carefully.

Because the Community Center closes at 9:30 p.m., the meeting is being held 6:30-9:30 p.m., a half hour earlier than our usual time.

Meeting Notes

By Alvin Takamori

The Los Angeles InDesign User Group met at the Roxbury Community Center in Beverly Hills on September 21, 2017. This time the topic was how to transfer information between Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign files. The presenter was Rod Huddleston, who teaches graphics and design at The Art Institute of California.

It didn't take long for Rod to make what I thought was a very important point. When using Word and InDesign, focus on what each application does best. Word is an excellent word processor. It has automatic grammar and spell checking, and word counting. InDesign is good at organizing and creating a layout, and making it look good. In most cases, this means your final output will be through InDesign.

To create the desired output, the first step is to plan ahead and decide what that output is going to look like. That means you have to begin with InDesign, even if the content is contained in a Word document. Go into InDesign and use dummy text to create all the text elements you plan to use, the headers, sub-headers, body copy, captions, etc. It's essential that you generate the Paragraph and Character Styles for each of those elements. To make the Styles think about the features of the text: the font, the font size, bold or italic, spacing, etc. As a side note, Rod mentioned that if you base one Style on another you might produce unintended results. If you make any change to the base Style later, all Styles based on it will also be changed.

Once you have created how you want the document to look in InDesign with all the Styles that are to be used, you can go to the next step. Open the Word document with all the actual content and recreate all the Styles. Use the exact same names for the Styles that you used in InDesign. You don't have to worry about applying the same characteristics to the text in the Word Styles, just give them the same name.

Next, place the content from the Word document into the previously created InDesign file replacing the dummy text. Make sure Show Import Options is checked. The Import Option Dialog box will pop up and you can check Preserve Style. You do not want to Import Styles. When you Import the text from Word, a warning about Style Name Conflicts should pop up and provide you with the option to choose InDesign to Apply Definition to the Style.

Using this process, if you have a client sending content in a Word document you can ask them to send unformatted files or provide them with a template containing all the correct Styles.

Rob told us there are three options for placing text into InDesign. The manual option drops text into a frame and it stops if there is overflow text. A semi-automatic option allows overflow text to go to following existing text boxes. Automatic text placement automatically generates additional text frames on additional pages to accommodate all the overflow text.

Frequently, Word documents from external sources will have issues with double spacing and double returns. You can quickly clean up all of that using Find and Replace. You'll also want to examine Widow and Orphan control and run the text through Auto Correct to check spelling and grammar.

Next, Rob showed us a how he created a glossary using Nested Styles. He also demonstrated how to Auto Place images using ISBN numbers and scripting.

He ended his presentation by answering questions. Our Co-Manager DeShawn added several of his own tips. Then we gave away what seemed like a million raffle prizes, courtesy of LAIDUG's many sponsors.

Farthest Attendee

The bona fide LAIDUG member who travels the farthest specifically to attend the meeting will receive her or his choice of any one deal at MightyDeals up to $50.00. Mighty Deals offers fonts, templates, apps, e-books, etc. You need to prove to us that you traveled farthest to attend this meeting. Having recently moved to the area from somewhere else won't cut it. Be prepared to show us indication of your current residence—perhaps a driver's license or a utility bill. Decision of the administrators of the Los Angeles InDesign User Group is final. Winner — Betty Hopkins

Raffles

LAIDUG is supported by raffles of donated prizes. No one is required to participate in the raffles. Raffle tickets are: 1 for $3, 2 for $5, 5 for $10, 11 for $20, 24 for $40, 32 for $50 and 65 for $100. All major credit cards are accepted.

Auction Winner

Redokun translation software. 12 month subscription. Value $600.00 Winner — Betty Hopkins

Raffle Prizes and Winners

eDocker CREATE! 6 month subscription. Value $774.00 Winner — Myra Lerma

CROWD-PLEASER! Adobe Creative Cloud. 12 month subscription. Value $599.88 Winner — Beverly Houwing

Stock Layouts. Full access to Stock Layout template library. 3 month subscription. Value $299.00 Winner — Betty Hopkins

NEW! WordsFlow Plus from Em Software. Value $300.00 Winners — Alice Hom, Traci Larson, Kim Senn

Markzware. Any single product. 12 month subscription. Value $199.00 Winner — Stephanie G. Brown

NEW! ID2Office from Recosoft. Value $199.00 Winner — Traci Larson

Expo Creative Asset Manager for Mac from Insider Software. Value $149.00 Winner — Traci Larson

Font Agent Pro 7 from Insider Software. Value $99.95 Winner — Angelina Altobano

InMotion Hosting. Web hosting and free domain. Value $90.00 Winner — Colleen Gates

DTP Tools Cloud for InDesign. 6 month subscription. $77.40 Winner — Norine Lukaczyk

TypeDNA. Font management software. Value $49.00 Winner — Colleen Gates

Adobe Stock. 15 image licenses. $44.00 Winner — Myra Lerma

InDesign Magazine. 6 month subscription. Value $30.00 Winner — Traci Larson

Pluralsight. 1 month subscription. Value $29.00 (two raffles) Winners — Angelia Altobano, Stephanie G. Brown

LA Web Professionals Group meeting tickets. Value $7.99 (four raffles) Winners — Stephanie G. Brown, Beverly Houwing, Myra Lerma, Kim Senn