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…???

Great site!

(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.”

It’s $200 but does a great job.

http://markzware.com/store_usa/Q2ID.php