*** From the Archives ***
This article is from June 20, 2006, and is no longer current.
Getting Text Out of Old QuarkXPress Files
Scott O. wrote:
How can I get text out of old QuarkXPress files? Thanks for your time.
I sometimes sit on the back porch and wonder how many QuarkXPress files there are in the world. What about other worlds? The answer is not 42. But however many there may be, you can be sure that someone, somewhere, is someday going to try to get those files into InDesign.
The good news is that InDesign will — all by itself — open QuarkXPress 3.x and 4.0 files. It won’t always do it perfectly, but it does a reasonably good job of it. For best results, I strongly recommend:
- Open the XPress file in XPress 3 or 4.
- Make sure all the linked images are OK.
- Make sure you have the fonts installed.
- Use File>Save As to save a nice clean version of the XPress file.
Then you should be able to open it in InDesign by using File>Open (or just drag the XPress file over the InDesign application icon). In my experience, InDesign CS2 does a better job of opening QX files than CS, but some things still may change. For example, it’s pretty rare that you won’t get some text reflow — after all, the two programs use radically different text composition engines, so it’s hard to imagine how InDesign could retain XPress’s text flow.
Here are five other things you should know about getting content out of XPress files. First, if you open an XPress file, you might consider using File>Export to create an InDesign Interchange Format (INX) file. Then open that INX file in InDesign. This cleans out any weirdness that might have snuck in during the conversion. (Perhaps that’s just superstition, but that’s what I do.)
Second, remember that sometimes it’s easier to just export your text stories out of QuarkXPress as Word documents and place those files into a new InDesign template.
Third, if you have an XPress 5 or 6 document, you can save it down to a QX4 document and then open it in InDesign. Or, you can use the Q2ID plug-in to open it. Q2ID can open XPress documents from version 3 to 6, and in some cases does it better than InDesign does it itself.
Fourth, if you’re tempted to try to export XML out of XPress and then somehow get it into InDesign, please call a doctor and get some medication to make that desire go away. Unless you’re a masochist, in which case feel free to roll in the pleasures of a painful month of attempts.
Finally, if you’re just trying to get raw text out of an XPress document, note that you can often just open the file in a text editor (such as Notepad or TextWrangler). You’ll see a huge amount of garbage, but if you scroll down you may find just what you’re looking for.
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Uhhh… What about opening the file in Quark, selecting the text, copy, and then switching to InDesign and then pasting? You will lose formatting, but at least you have all the text. The obviously works better on short amounts of text. For pages and pages of text, some of the ways suggested in the story would be better…
Ah, yes… Copy and paste. Okay, that’s #6!
Pretty sure that you cannot save directly from QX6 (6.5) back down to QX4; you need to save to 5 then to 4, which is fine – if you have 5, but many users missed that version and went straight to 6 ($ave $$$).
Right, you can’t save a v6 QXP doc to v4, only to v5 … one version back. Absent a copy of v5 around (to save back to v4), the best solution is that Q2ID plugin David mentioned. I have it and it works great.
I have a seventh way (to get text out of a Quark file to pour into ID): Make a PDF out of it. That is, export the QXP file to PDF (via its own Export or via the usual PostScript > Distiller method); then in Acrobat 7 open it up, go to File > Save As and choose Rich Text Format.
You can place that RTF doc right in ID as a single story, cutting and pasting excerpts to their own text frames as necessary. If the doc was complicated you’ll probably find some chunks of text in the wrong order, but it’s better than retyping the whole thing (which would be the 8th way, get the intern to do it).
Markzware has Q2ID, which can easily and effectively import QuarkXPress 6 and lower files right into InDesign CS1 or CS2! (Q2ID 7 is also coming soon for v7 QuarkXPress.)
https://www.markzware.com/q2id
-David
He’s not kidding when he says exporting to InDesign Interchange Format cleans the junk out. I just resaved a bunch of InDesign files (that had once been Quark imports) and the file sizes are practically 50% smaller.
Do I need to have Acrobat Professional to Save it as Rich Text Format? Because I cant do it! Please help!
I think you do need the Pro version to export RTF, but I’m not sure. Try doing a google search for “convert pdf to rtf” and you’ll see that there are lots of other ways to make this conversion. (I haven’t tried them, though.)
Ok, I made RTF. And then I find out, that in this way I can only place text in ID, but i need the whole file, with all pictures and layers and styles and … So, does anybody know where can I find somethnig like Q2ID, but for free, or maybe a trial?
Thanks!
Andrea, the “free” part is that InDesign opens QX 3.3 and 4 files by itself! If you have a QX 5 file, export it as QX4… if you have a QX6 file, export it as QX5, then open in QX5 and save down to QX4… ;)
And how can I do that? Cause I have only Quark 7 (trial version).And the file was made in Quark 6 (Mac OS).
Thanks again!
Or you can get Markzware Quark to InDesign Plugin. Works for Quark 6.5 files.
It’s $200 but does a great job.
https://markzware.com/store_usa/Q2ID.php
Yes, Eric, that’s the Q2ID plug-in I mentioned in the post. But thanks for the link and recommendation.
What is the best way to select ALL the text in Quark 6 so I can copy and paste anywhere I want? Such a pain selecting each text box and repeating hundreds of times.
Sigh, there is no way to select all the text in a document (either QX or ID) to copy it to the clipboard — unless all text is in a single story. But there are ways to export all the text to a text file.
Just ran into this and thought I’d add a few words I sent along to our Indian coworkers, who were having mixed results with these different methods (may be too long): “Some of the extraction methods that can be used, with some of the problems associated with them:
(1) Copy and paste. Text can be copied from the open Quark file, then pasted into the new InDesign file. This is quick but dirty, since when a new style is applied to the text, internal formatting (italics, supers, etc.) disappears.
(2) TeXTractor. TexTractor can extract the entire chapter (including such things as running heads and line numbers in readings, unfortunately, if they?re not deleted) in different formats, depending upon which filters you have installed in Quark. These include various versions of Word and XPress tags (the proprietary tagging for Quark, which is something of a basic XTags coding). While exporting with XPress tags does give you the benefit of including everything that?s in the file, it does give you coding that often indiscriminately combines codes (e.g. , instead of ), which makes it harder to clean up the files efficiently.
(3) Open the Quark file in InDesign. Problematic, since we don?t know the extent of the problems associated with this method yet. Applying new styles can also destroy internal formatting.
There have been some occasions in the past when variations on the above have been used for the odd book. But above all, the coder and typesetter have to be aware of what can go wrong in each case, and must communicate that as well to quality control, so the proofer is aware of what to look for, aside from the usual.
For the vast majority of pickup projects, when a coder is working in concert with the pager, we?ve found XTags to be the best way to retain reliably the most information for importation into a new design or program. But there are a number of things to be aware of. First, you need to set your XTag preferences so that (1) it doesn?t export style-sheet definitions; (2) it outputs separate tags (instead of ); and (3) it omits default elements in list tags. These settings will minimize the profusion and confusion of tags extracted with the file. (Note: You DO want XTags to report errors, so you can find them to fix.)
Second, the typesetter needs to know that when you have nothing highlighted, ?Save Text with XTags? will save the entire LINKED document. In other words, floating elements such as tables and boxes that are not in the text string will not be saved. These must be done separately. If you highlight a table in the Quark file, you can ?Copy XTags Text? (in the edit menu), then paste it into the word-processing file you?ve built from the main text string (note that you must group items to save them as XTags, rather than just select multiple items). In Quark, this can also be used to ascertain the coding needed to perform additional tasks for the typesetter (such as automatically positioning an inline icon, for instance). Once you?ve assembled a complete text file, the next step is to clean it up for importation into the new design or program.”
Hey, i was wondering if anyone has a trial of the q2id plugin, as i dont want to purchase it if it doesnt do the job, correctly.
Great site!
It doesn’t appear that there is a demo version at Marzkware.com, but I have a copy here and I have been using it recently to open QX7.2 documents. It’s quite amazing how quickly and well it works.
Remember, OS Classic is not supported in Leopard (10.5). Thus, saving to Quark 4 does not really help, I reckon it’s better to move on and get the Q2ID plug-in. :-)
Markzware’s Quark to InDesign now supports Quark 8 and CS4 and is a fantastic App.
They also made/s a great one back in the Pagemaker days to convert to Quark…
They also have one to convert InDesign to Quark… can you believe that…???
There’s also Markzware’s PageZephyr which does the trick. I downloaded the demo and was able to extract out all the texts I needed. Just sharing my find.