Place Word document not working

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    • #73604

      I have a long (100 000 word) Word document that I need to place in an InDesign project.
      The word document is very simple, with no track changes or comments. It is a .doc document with very little formatting, only some headings and italics.

      When I go File > Place, nothing happens.

      I’ve tested with a different Word document with no problem.
      I’ve tried saving the Word file as .rtf, which made no difference.
      I’ve tried creating a new, blank Indesign project, same problem.

      I’m using Word 2003 and InDesign CS6 on a Windows 7 machine.

      What could I be doing wrong?

    • #73605

      Could be a formatting issue within the Word doc.

      It could be a PostScript error. Have you tried printing the document or saving to PDF?

      Some more troubleshooting you can try to isolate the problem:
      -Save as a plain text file and import.
      -Try importing 10 (for example) pages at a time, to a new InDesign document each time. If there’s a problem on page 34, etc. it will reveal itself.
      -Try copying and pasting several pages at a time.
      -Have someone with OS X try it. (I can try if you want)

      Good Luck,
      neeners

    • #73607

      Thank you, Coleen.
      So far, simply copying and pasting is the only method I’ve found that transfers the text and keeps the little bit of formatting that there is.

      I’ll try these suggestions now.

    • #73608

      Just in case anyone else has a similar problem, I’ll report back on the solution:

      I simply copied and pasted all the text from the Word document, into a new Word document. For some reason, InDesign had no difficulties importing the new Word document with File > Place :)

    • #99083
      John Westlie
      Member

      Amazing to say, the solution proposed above by Kip works. I copied the entire word document, pasted it as a whole into a new word document, gave it a new name. The new doc placed without any problem, whereas I could not place the original document at all. They’re apparently identical, but cutting and pasting the text did something!

    • #99085

      If you have an old version of InDesign it can’t import newer versions of Word-docs. What version og InDesign and Word do you use?

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