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Very cool! Thank you!
Yes, this is a very good thing. We have been doing this for a number of our customers for years.
There are a number of different things in word that will cause problems though. (I hate Word!!).
The main problem is always Words autocorrect. If you can, tell people to disable auto correct completely in Word BEFORE writing, otherwize you will have to do a lot of cleaning up.
One example is if you write a web address (https://creativepro.com). Word will apply a character format of blue and underlined. InDesign will import that, and also create a hyperlink automatically. In this case you can create a hyperlink style in InDesign that counteracts the blue undelined style, and make sure they are mapped correctly. Don´t forget the “visited”-style (pink and underlined).
I you turn off autocorrect in Word, this will not be a problem. But you have to do it BEFORE you write the text.
Another example is if someone writes a “minus” in the beginning of a new paragraph, followed by a space. That will convert the paragraph to a bulleted list! Crazy!!
This is a problem, at least in the swedish language, because a dash (not a minus!) followed by a fixed space is generally how you indicate someone speaking in a story in Swedish, so you get a lot of those.
I wrote a whole manual for a customer on how to fix these, and a myriad of other problems in Word when cleaning up other peoples Word files, in preparation for an InDesign import. Most problems can be eliminated if you just convince everybody to disable Words autocorrect.
Also, make sure people don´t use the buttons for italic and bold. Tell them to use the character styles for this (the “emphasis” styles, or their own), so that they can be mapped easily to a character style in InDesign. Otherwize you will have to search and replace all italics and bolds in Word or InDesign, to make sure they don’t dissapear somewhere along the road (we made Word macros for our customers that does this).
Also, if you have a Word file that has been created in a version of Word that is not English (with international characters in the name of the styles), i would recommend to resave the word file to the older format (.doc) first. InDesign is crap at handling .docx-files with international characters in style names (I’m Swedish), and you will end up with a lot of extra nonsense character styles to delete, and incorrectly named styles to map. It can be very confusing. The older format (.doc) works fine though.
We have made custom Word templates for a number of our customers, so that they always use the same styles in Word. That will save a lot of time for the designers later. If you can control this, it is highly recommended.
Lastly, one more time: Whatever you do, DISABLE WORDS AUTOCORRECT!!
Is there away to adjust saved mapping styles? I the workflow down, but would like to delete older versions of my style maps. I can’t find it anywhere.
Joe: I think you just have to re-save it with the same name, yes?
Joe, like David says, you can just choose the same name from the Save Preset dropdown menu (in the Word Import Options dialog box). You’ll get an alert that it already exists, asking you to confirm that you want to overwrite it.
OR you can find the Word Import Presets folder on your hard drive, and edit them in a text editor. A little geeky but pretty clear cut. The Word Import Presets folder is the at the same location as your User Scripts. So the fastest way to get there is by opening the Scripts panel in InDesign, then right-click on the User folder and choose Reveal in Finder (or Explorer).
The word presets in the user scripts is what I was looking for! Thanks. I’m developing workflows for multiple clients using presets. I wish it were as easy as adapting work spaces in where you can replace/re-save over specific names. Maybe in CC2016.
Thanks for your suggestions.
JP