Creating a book from a Word manuscript

Jan Underhill

This topic has 4 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 10 months ago by Alan Gilbertson.

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- June 1, 2016 at 12:12 pm #85346
  
  Jan Underhill
  Member
  
  How can I remove the extra returns after every paragraph in a book manuscript typed in Microsoft Word? How much formatting should I do in Word to make importing the manuscript easier?
- June 1, 2016 at 2:26 pm #85363
  
  David Blatner
  Keymaster
  
  Hi Jan, there are lots of articles on cleaning up and importing Word docs here on indesignsecrets. For example:
  https://creativepro.com/remove-multiple-returns-and-replace-with-space-between-paragraphs.php
  
  You might also want to watch Anne-Marie Concepcion’s video tutorial on making Word and InDesign work better together at lynda.com.
- June 1, 2016 at 3:30 pm #85370
  
  Ari Singer
  Member
  
  Do a GREP Find/Change with the following settings:
  
  Find What: \r\r
  
  Change To: \r
  
  Hit “Change All”.
  
  This basically finds any instance of two carriage returns one after the other, and replaces it with just one.
- June 2, 2016 at 2:32 pm #85414
  
  Jan Underhill
  Member
  
  Thank you! I am not a regular user of Word except when given to me as material by clients. This forum may prove to be a life saver.
- June 2, 2016 at 9:15 pm #85424
  
  Alan Gilbertson
  Participant
  
  Jan, there’s an essential script that does exactly what you ask and more. Even better, it ships with InDesign.
  
  Bring your text into InDesign from the Word document, then select all the text. Press Ctl-Alt-F11 (on Windows, Cmd-Opt-F11 on Mac) to bring up the Scripts Panel. Twirl open the “Application” set, then “Javascript.” Scroll down until you come to “Find/Change by List” and double-click to run it.
  
  This script removes all the usual author errors: empty lines (including lines with extra white space), changes double spaces to single, double hyphens to n-dashes, and lots more. David provides lots more information about this and the other scripts that ship with InDesign here: https://creativepro.com/default-sample-scripts-indesign.php
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