Strip the Crud from Word Files Before You Map Styles
November 29th, 2006One of my favorite features in CS2 appears at the bottom of the Word Import Options dialog box: Custom Style Mapping.
This is the feature to use if you’re receiving Word files that the author has applied their own style sheets to, either the ones built into Word (like Heading 1, Heading 2) or ones they created all by themselves, the dears; and you want InDesign to automatically to replace those with equivalent styles (differently-named, though) you created in your layout file as you import the document.
Click the Style Mapping button to open up a dialog box that lists all the Word doc’s styles on the left and all your InDesign layout’s styles (initially all defaulting to New Paragraph Style) on the right. Use the dropdown menus on the InDesign side to choose which Paragraph or Character Style you want each Word style to map to, like this:
With Custom Style Mapping, you can tell InDesign “Hey, as I flow in this file, anything the user applied their Header 1 style to, remove it and apply my InDesign paragraph style called Headline instead; where ever they used their Word style “Salutation,” use the layout’s Body Copy style instead; if the knucklehead set Word to automatically apply its Hyperlink character style to web URLs, apply my “No Character Style” to those please;” and so on.
The goal here is to bring in a Word file almost fully-formatted with InDesign styles, and no tell-tale disc icons in the Styles palettes (indicating an imported style).
When in doubt, map a Word style to InDesign’s default Basic Paragraph Style — including Word’s default Normal style! Leave no Word style unmapped.
When you remap styles in this way you get another huge benefit: InDesign takes care to retain any local formatting the Word user applied. Meaning, if they made a few words Bold or Italic in a Word-styled paragraph, InDesign keeps them Bold or Italic after it applies the InDesign style you mapped it to. This is not the case if you use InDesign’s Find/Change Formatting after the fact to replace paragraph and character styles, which strips out all local formatting as it does its Changing thing.
Fixing cruddy Word files
In the best of all possible worlds, as you’re choosing which styles to map to which, the Custom Style Mapping dialog box lists just the styles actually used in the Word document — three or four, maybe ten at the most, usually. But in some cases, you’re confronted with a monster list of Word styles, as in this one:
Now, I opened that Word document that caused what you’re looking at, and 90 percent of those styles aren’t used in it. (And yes, I made sure to uncheck the “User is a Masochist” checkbox in Word Import Options — aka Import Unused Styles — before opening up the Style Mapping dialog.) I’m not quite sure why some Word files come in full of unused styles and others don’t.
But if you’re confronted by such a long list of styles, don’t bother guessing which are really used or not. Just run away screaming. Or, cancel out of the Import Options dialog box for now (don’t place the file), and do a quick bit of Crud Removal prep work to the Word doc before you try again:
- Create a new InDesign document of any size … you’re not going to save this, it’s just temporary.
- In the new document, File > Place the same Word file, this time being sure to choose the Preserve Styles and Formatting radio button in the Import Options dialog box, as well as Import Styles Automatically. Yes, you do want to import all the Word styles into this layout. For now.
- Click the loaded Place cursor anywhere on your new document so it creates one text frame with some of the text in it. Don’t worry if it’s overset. Note all the disc icons infesting your Paragraph Styles and Character Styles palettes. Not to worry.
- Double-click inside the text frame so you get the Type tool cursor blinking in it, and choose File > Export. You’re going to export this entire story to a new file.
- In the Export dialog box, choose Rich Text Formatting from the Format dropdown menu, and save the .rtf file someplace handy, like your desktop. Rich Text Formatting retains virtually all of the Word formatting, including Style names, but only those actually used in the file.
- Close the temporary InDesign document but don’t bother saving changes. You can toss it out.
- Back in your original layout, Edit > Place the exported RTF document you just created. Now look at the Custom Style Mapping dialog box, and you should see a much shorter list of styles, indicating just the ones that were actually used in the original Word file.
Here’s my result from the same Word file with the horrendous list of styles, now being placed an RTF file:
InDesign’s Export to RTF feature: It’s the designer’s best friend.
This is a great tip and a strategy that I use often. Another way to do this is to open the Word file that has all of those styles in it. Copy all of the text and then paste it into another blank Word file. This will transfer only the used Word styles into the new Word document. You can then import this one into InDesign and do the Custom Mapping.
Thanks, Jason! Good tip, I’ll try it out next time. (Does copying/pasting in Word bring along footnotes too?)
Anne-Marie, you mentioned the little disk icon in the Styles palettes (indicating that a style was brought in from a file from a disk). I find that so dang cute: It’s a floppy disk icon! When was the last time we used a floppy disk to transfer files? I can’t wait to see if Adobe updates this icon in CS3 to a USB thumbdrive or a CD or something from the 21st century.
I really like this blog. I try to read summaries in Google Reader. What follows is how the summary for this article appears in GReader (come on guys, clean up your xml):
One of my favorite features in CS2 appears at the bottom of the Word Import Options dialog box: Custom Style Mapping.
This is the feature to use if you’re receiving Word files that the author has applied their own style sheets to, either the ones built into Word (like Heading 1, Heading 2) or ones they created all by themselves, the dears; and you want InDesign to automatically to replace those with equivalent styles (differently-named, though) you created in your layout file as you import the document.
This is perfect timing, as I could use some advice with this.
I have to format a lengthy calendar of events every month, each day is organized like this:
Day
Date
Event Title
Event Info
(that’s it, simple and repetitive, there’s only four stylesheets, it’s beautiful.)
So, I receive the calendar in Word all stylesheeted, bring it into InDesign, take care of style mapping like you outlined above, and it works beautifully as far as replacing the stylesheets. EXCEPT: for some reason it will jump anything with the Day stylesheet into a completely separate text box that sits on top of the main text box.
Any idea what’s doing that?
rsanders: Um, the summary looks fine to me … could you explain the prob?
Jack: Does the Day style have any Keep settings (Paragraph palette menu) applied to it or is there a page break/frame break character applied to it? Are you stripping out all Page Breaks when you import the Word file? (recommended … it’s a setting the Import Options dialog box).
Regarding importing Word files, my newspaper has been struggling with a problem for a while. Sometimes, when we place a Word file (no style mapping done), it looks fine, but then when we apply our formatting to it, some or all of the tab indents disappear, meaning that we have to redo them manually. What’s odd is that this happens inconsistently, with certain articles but not with others. My guess is that it has something to do with Word’s Autocorrect, that when Autocorrect changes tabs to indents, it either fixes the problem or causes it. Does anyone have any idea what a fix could be?
P.S. I hope it’s okay to be posting a question here instead of in a dedicated troubleshooting forum somewhere.
P.P.S. Anne-Marie, thanks so much for mentioning Acrobat Connect and YouSendIt in your Design Geek newsletter. They’re both absolutely terrific!
There are so many things that could be said regarding bringing MS Word docs into InDesign (most of them using expletives). We cover this in more detail in the books InDesign Breakthroughs and Real World InDesign, of course. However, two things to think about: Use the Clear Overrides button liberally (this is a great CS2 feature) and read Anne-Marie’s earlier post on Word styles.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
I was pulling out my hair earlier this week and not deleting any expletives. BTW Dave, the file came to me on an orange, 3.5 in., hard plastic floppy disk…yes, the darned things do still exist
Can i ask you, how can i write in bulgarian language in a boock says that i can but when i’ve instaled the program there was no option “bulgarian”
I actually ask how can I make spell chec in bulgarian?
If you want to use Bulgarian, you will need a plug-in such as InDitect from aextra software.
Thank you very much.
Bringing bulleted copy styled in Word into InDesign is a problem. Since one wants to see it in Word for reference, but one has to take out every bullet and tab space on each line. Does anyone know a workaround
Is it possible to import an entire calandar created in word into InDesign. How do I do it?
how can select all text frame text?
i could not able copy the all text from all text frame.
There is no way to select text in more than one text frame to copy it. However, you can format text in more than one frame on a spread by selecting the frames, switching to the Type tool, and then formatting it in the Control panel.
If you’re trying to export all the text from all your frames in your document, try the free ExportAllStories.jsx script that comes with InDesign (but is not installed automatically).
hi there.
I’m having problems with importing text which has the odd word as italic text (our house style has film titles in italic). I’ve asked the writer to style film titles as a character style (Arial 12 italic) and the rest of the document as a paragraph style (Arial 12 normal).
Using the Customize style sheet, i then changed the word styles to my all ready created indesign styles - but the film titles still apear in Arial 12 italic, although the paragraph style sheet does update. HELP ! I’m sure I’m creating my character style correctly in indesign3.
stephen