Free lynda.com Videos: Using Word and InDesign Together
InDesign and Word are like the Godzilla and King Kong of layout and word processing, and like those legendary behemoths, the two applications don’t always get along. And when they don’t, look out! Your sanity—and your deadlines—can crumble like a cardboard model of Tokyo.
Fortunately, Anne-Marie Concepción knows how to make InDesign and Word place nice together and that’s exactly what she does in her Lynda.com course, Using Word and InDesign Together.
Among the free sample videos from the course that you can check out are the following:
Cleaning up text formatting in Word
Creating a Word template with InDesign styles
Roundtripping to InDesign RTF to clean up unnecessary information
For Lynda.com members, if you are currently signed in to your account, you can also check out these videos from the series.
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Managing inline images and photos
Deleting Word hyperlinks and/or their formatting
Converting Word docs to InCopy for fast and accurate formatting
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Some other Word to InDesign goodness, written by Yours Truly:
Moving Text From Word to InDesign
https://creativepro.com/moving-text-from-word-to-indesign/
Creating Macros in Microsoft Word
https://creativepro.com/creating-macros-in-microsoft-word/
Creating Toolbars in Microsoft Word
https://creativepro.com/creating-toolbars-in-microsoft-word/
That’s what I do–macros and save the Word file as a text file. I have a macro to clean up the word files (italic, bold, small caps, superior figures, etc.). It also takes care of double spaces, extra returns, and turns em and en dashes into the appopriate ascii characters. I run that on the author file and save as a text file. Then I re-open the word file and run a second macro to add thin spaces between single and double quotes, thin spaced ellipses, tracking before superior figures so they don’t crash with preceding closing quotes or ascenders.
To me, it’s much easier than screwing around with importing Word files.
Been doing that for 20 years.
excuse the typos, I can’t edit to fix.
How do you insert a thin space in Word? At least in Word 2011 for Mac I haven’t been able to figure it out. And while I haven’t tried it, I find it curious that you add tracking in Word—I would think the amount of tracking needed would depend on the line as set in InDesign (font size, line length, justification settings, etc.)
Thanks for the great tips
As I mentioned in the final “Next Steps” video of my course, where I show my favorite resources for learning more about Word and InDesign, especially Word ;-), if you go to the Editorium (https://editorium.com/) you’ll find TONS of macros and utilities for cleaning up Word documents in prep for flowing into ID. The editor extraordinaire Jack Lyon is the wizard behind that site. Subscribe to his Editorium Update and/or read his blog at https://editorium.com/archive/. I’ve been a reader since he started publishing it in 2000.
Jack’s also the author of a few tech-y books on the same topic (one book is *just* about Word macros!). His magnum opus though is Microsoft Word for Publishing Professionals. Amazing. https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Word-Publishing-Professionals-Jack/dp/143410236X
@Jamie McKee: to get thin spaces, change the Mac keyboard to Unicode Hex input and access then via alt 2009. These come through from Word to InDesign. And you can search/replace for them in Word as well.