*** From the Archives ***
This article is from December 5, 2008, and is no longer current.
Q2ID is now available for CS4
Markzware has released their new version of Q2ID. It now supports both InDesign CS4 and the ability to convert QuarkXPress 8 files. They are providing free upgrades to people that purchased it after Oct 17.
Personally, I really think this is a very useful plug-in. I still have to deal with an old Quark file every now and then, and it is easily worth the money.The plug-in is needed if you want to open Quark 5-8 files. Otherwise if you have a Quark 8 file, you need to Export it out of Quark 8 to Quark 7, then open Quark 7 and export to Quark 6, open it in Quark 6 and export to Quark 5, Open it in Quark 5 and export to Quark 4. Then finally you can open it for free inside InDesign. That is a headache that this plug-in solves.
From my experience with this plug-in I feel that it does about a 95% job. There will be some text re-flow issues and you will want to make sure nothing crazy happened. The more basic the layout, the better your results. One annoyance that you need to look out for is that after a conversion, some of your text will get a yellow highlight. This is because Q2ID turns of substituted glyph highlighting in the preferences. To fix this, go to your preferences > Composition > and turn off substituted glyphs.
I also recommend that when-ever you are converted a quark file. You will want to clean it up by exporting your newly converted file as an inx and then re-open it to clean up the file. Although it might be interesting to try exporting it as an IDML and reopen it to see if that does an even better job (which I assume it does). From my experience this is good preventative maintenance since converted quark files can causes headaches. I have seen colors that won’t delete, styles that won’t stick, master pages won’t apply and other strange things.
ID Secrets has covered converting Quark files in the past.
How to get text out of a quark file
How you can round-trip flaky ID files using both Q2ID and ID2Q.
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Only once did I get a Quark file from a different designer, and she couldn’t open it herself anymore as she no longer had Quark. With nobody we knew being able to turn it into an InDesign file, we had to buy the plug-in, and it worked a treat. Never used it again after that one time though.
I’m not sure if the original file had no layers, but the file I got in InDesign had everything on one layer, so that took me some work (I tend to go nuts with layers).
I’ll just keep CS3 installed, with the Q2ID plug-in installed just in case. Upgrading a plug-in I use once every 3 years isn’t worth it, but it sure is a great plug-in if you need to open Quark files often.
another $99? Come on! Seriously, I couldn’t believe it. I just upgraded to v3 of this plugin what seems like yesterday. I see zero new functionality, this is mainly a compatibility upgrade with CS4, I really expected it to be free or very, very cheap for v3 owners. v2 or v1, sure, hit them up, but for a v3 upgrade to v4? 1/2 as much as the whole thing?
I guess this just finally put me over the edge. It’s no wonder CS4 sales are less than they expected. Many of us felt like it’s just too soon to hit us all up again for an upgrade. This CS4 should have been CS3.5 or something.
I’m done venting.
I agree, john. i like the plugin, but I won’t be paying $100 to upgrade. the vast majority of the files I needed to convert have been converted. i’d rather leave a copy of InDy CS2 installed than fork over another $100 for the “upgrade.”
As far as CS4 goes, though, while I understand your frustration (especially the $$), I can’t wait until my copy gets here. The updates in InDesign were great.
I have found the Q2ID plug in to be absolutely invaluable. I haven’t upgraded to the version for CS3…because I still have that on the computer sitting right next to this one. I will probably hit the boss for the newest version when we upgrade to CS4 because I get files from everywhere and everywhen.
Fritz, you are absolutely correct about the instant export to inx. Anytime I forget to do that I am rather rudely reminded of the proper procedure.
The new version adds Quark 8 compatibility. That said, it you upgraded recently contact Markzware ask them if you’re eligible for a free upgrade.
But please, don’t minimize the amount of work that goes into developing these plugins. Nobody has a gun to your head to upgrade. I’m not going to do it until I get a Quark 8 file that needs to be converted.
I don’t minimize anyones work. I’ve been buying upgrades for almost 20 years now. But Quark 8 compatibility? CS4 compatibility? That’s it? I don’t know, I usually go for the upgrades just to keep everything in sync. I didn’t like it, but I paid the $99 to Markzware a few months after paying the full $199 because I had just gotten the CS3 and switched to Intel macs, and I had little choice, I had to have the CS3 upgrades or keep an old mac and all that. Fine, I survived, but to do it again a year later just makes me mad. We’re all in business to make money, but there is a line, and I think Adobe and others have finally crossed it for me. I just simply will make do with an older version for the first time ever. Maybe in 6 months when the CS4 upgrades are plentiful and cheaper will I try it. I guess when you are a one-man shop, $99 is a lot.
On a related note, Markzware will only give a free upgrade to anyone who bought the full version after Oct. 17, that’s 60 days heads up. $29, $39 I might have jumped…you know, they need to cover their butts a bit.
Someone who already has CS3 and the earlier version really doesn’t need to upgrade. Like I said, I have the CS3 version that will open Quark 7 and earlier. Until I see a Quark 8 file, it’s just fine for me.
For someone just switching from Quark to InDesign starting with CS4 the $199.00 price is worth it and the minute I see a Quark 8 file that I need to work with, the credit card will come out for the upgrade.
No doubt it’s a great plugin, nothing else like it at the moment, but 1/2 again as much each year or so it seems, doesn’t make sense. But, to each his own.
Am I off base here or does this make sense?
I was thinking about this and I was working trough the cost justification of getting PDF2ID instead of Q2ID. It would be $50 more but I’d be able to convert any version 1.4 PDF to InDesign. I’d have to keep a copy of Quark around but I’d be able to take any PDF 1.4 from that and convert it to ID. Unless some client still demands I use Quark (I’m still on 6.5 and haven’t had much demand to upgrade) I think this would be far more useful way to go as I’m constantly getting PDFs to convert with NO source files to work with. The time savings alone could justify going this way than just Q2ID alone.
i don’t think it’s minimizing the amount of work that goes into creating a plugin to say that an upgrade being half the price of the full program is not the kind of pricing that is going to get people who don’t absolutely *HAVE* to upgrade to do it.
thankfully i’ll likely never have to deal with a quark 8 file. we abandoned quark, which is why we bought the plugin, so we could convert old files as we needed to resurrect them.
@Mark, While PDF2ID is very nice plugin it won’t give you anywhere near the quality translation that going from a native Quark or Publisher file will using Q2ID or PUB2ID.
PDFs don’t have paragraph or character styles or any of the other niceties you’d find in a native file.
I agree, this plugin has become invaluable to my development. i found a coupon for all those interested https://www.markzwarecoupon.com
I’m so glad I found Q2ID through this website, thanks and great job!