InDesign CS5: italics missing from imported Word document
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- This topic has 17 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 4 months ago by
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While working on a book, I've come to notice that some italics in the original Word document didn't make it into my InDesign document.
I'm doing some tests (with different import options) right now but so far I don't understand the logic of it. The missing styles, only italics, can be “real” italic or “faux” italic.
Before posting the result of my tests, I'd like to know if some of you have encountered the same problem?
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The import feature of InDesign only can map real styles applied in Word. But most Word users are using the “B-button” or “I-button” to make a word bold or italic. Even if they’re using a proper paragraph style, they format single word by those local overrides.
Here’s my workaround. I’m importing the Word document, map the styles (in case the Word user used some, worth to keep), keep the Word formatting for text and tables and then let the text flow into the InDesign document. Then I do a find change for every text which is formatted in “italic” or “bold” and replace the formatting with a proper character style. -
jpannier: Your workflow makes sense. Just FYI: the Blatner Tools suite of plug-ins has a way to save you time by making and applying all the italic, bold, etc., character styles for you.
However, in Mathieu's case, it sounds as though the italics aren't coming in at all! That is odd. Are you sure that the Import Options is set to retain the styles? Perhaps you have set it to remove all styles upon import? (Import Options is “sticky” so if you set it once, it stays that way for later imports.)
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@ jpannier: Thank you for the workaround, I'll include it in my tests. I have to use different import options to see if I can find a wait to get all the italics into my ID document.
@ David: To be precise, some italics don't show up in InDesign. In the original Word document, I have groups of words in “faux” italic, one of the them isn't imported into InDesign, whereas the other one is… I can't find a logic and this problem is scary because you can't afford to check if all italics are imported into InDesign. I've noticed that importing footnotes isn't very reliable as well but it's easier to check the original document for that. So far, I had never experienced such a problem and I need to find a solution. I've just finished designing a 600 pages book and that italic bug was a big problem.
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One idea comes to mind: InDesign won't make text italic if there is no such thing as an italic in that typeface. Perhaps the font you are using in some places does not have an italic?
One idea is to use jpannier's idea of find/change styles in Word instead of InDesign. That is, search for all text that has the Italic formatting applied to it and apply a true italic character style (you have to make the character style in Word first, of course). Then ID should import the character style. If the font doesn't have an italic face, it will show up as pink highlighting in InDesign — but the character style should be applied anyway!
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One idea comes to mind: InDesign won't make text italic if there is no such thing as an italic in that typeface.
Oooh — I spotted a mistake there!
While it's true you cannot make ID italicize a text if it has a font applied without an italics (not without some trickery — but it's pointless to boot), ID will merrily import faux italicized text. Thus, you can end up with “Univers [Italic]”, rather than the regular “Univers 56 Italic”.
I must confess that while I've had tons of troubles with Word files, your Disappearing Italics is a new one. But whenever my ID CS4 seems to have a little trouble with a certain Word document (*), I shuffle over to the next computer which has still CS3 installed. CS3 imports most (but not all) troublesome documents without a hitch. Your footnotes problems, for example, only appear in CS4 and newer, whereas CS3 has virtually no problem with those.
(*) Every now and then I get a batch of Word documents of different authors that appear to be edited by a single person. When the first of those set of files fail, the same usually goes for every other one. So it must be related somehow with the Word version that last wrote the file. Unfortunately, Word is so incredibly backwards compatible that it's impossible to figure out what version that exactly was — but there is something weird in the files, and it persists through repeated re-saves as well.
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@ Jongware: Thanks for your comments.
I've made some tests, the Word file I'm using comes from my client. In one ¶, a group of words is set in faux italic (typeface Times New Roman) in another ¶, the same group of words is also in faux italic. I guess, since Times New Roman has a true italic, that Word uses the true italic. I can see that from the shape of the one-story “a”.
1. import the original Word document (as received from my client), use a custom Import Option which “”Remove Styles And Formatting From Text And Tables” but “Preserve Local Overrides “. I don't want to get the styles from Words, especially when the sources are diverse but the import has to retain Italic + Bold.
results: one group appears in roman (typeface Minion Pro Regular) and the other in italic (Minion Pro Italic)!
2. import the resaved Word document from Word 2011: .doc and .docx, import options unchanged
results: same as 1.
3. import the original Word document, use another custom Import Option which “Imports Styles from Word”, which I'd rather not do but…
results: both groups appear in Italic now
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I fine-tuned my tests and noticed that only isolated all italic words don't make it into InDesign:
First of all, the same problem applies to bold as well.
1. Group of words in italic, on one line (paragraph), only italic, no spaces or glyphs in roman, result: no italic imported
2. Same group of words in italic , within a roman paragraph, result: italic is imported
3. case 1 with a space or one letter in roman, result: italic is imported
I sent a bug report to Adobe.
Since the Import Word Styles option seems to keep all the italic + bold formtatting, I'll stick to that import option, even though it means more cleaning after importing many Word documents from various sources…
@ Jongware: I've downloaded your “preptext” script, very useful thanks. Someone on the Adobe InDesign forum posted the link during discussions for the same italic problem I'm reporting here.
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I used to work with QuarkXPress and have never experienced problems with italic/bold when importing from Word (exept for DOCX!). Quark imports everything also faux italic/bold no matter the fonts and so on … So I was chokked when I started to use InDesign, I thought it was superior to Quark in that respect! With InDesign one have to go through the whole original Word-file and change all fonts and attributes first. There have to be made a solution for this.
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I've experienced Mathieu's problem many times, as have my colleagues. In fact, for some projects we've taken to having the copy-editors colour italic text a different colour so we can be sure what's meant to be italic and what isn't. The typesetter then does a global find and replace to change that colour to italic. Like Mathieu, we've never been able to get entirely to the bottom of what properties of the formatting cause it to be lost – at times it seems completely random.
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I have to import Word docs all day long, and for me the easiest way to keep everything “as is” in Word, is a macro I have in Word which creates char styles for italic, bold, superscript, etc. In Indesign I have the corrsponding char styles made (same name). When importing (place) or “copy-pasting” the Word file, all goes fine. All the char styles are transformed in real char styles and the rest of the text is ok too.
I then start applying the Indesign styles needed in the doc and I get rid of the “normal” style imported from Word.
A little script which helps a lot when the macro fails (often when footnotes are in tables in word) is the famous preptext script.
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Gert, thank you for sharing your workflow with us. We recently welcomed an intern at our graphic design studio, who had basic knowledge of programming and was familiar with macros in Word. We also settled down for a macro to assign styles in Word. We decided to use visual styles, for example colours, so that we can use these visual marks for proofreading. With this visual solution, of course the macro might miss something, you can easily spot italics in the original document if you need to check if all italics transefered well into InDesign.
I find it surprising that in 2012 a professional application can't garantee to import all text styling. Looking back, I can't seem to remember that Quark XPress ever missed italics or footnotes when importing text from Word. The options were very basic but it did the job. Of course, dealing with footnotes in the app was more complex but this is another topic.
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Oh man, thanks for posting all these.
I was experiencing the same issue in trying to import a chinese language Word document. I was losing all my bolds. I tried many different things: saving in different file formats and variations of Word (someone suggested RTF files work), tried different fonts in Word, different import settings in Indesign but all failed to retain my Bolds.
Finally I discovered (mainly through reading this thread) that the issue lied in the author having used the ‘B’ and ‘I’ buttons in Word to add Bold and Italic formatting, rather than using the actual Bold or Italic variations of the font.
Here’s how I fixed it:
I did an advanced search and replace in MS Word by:
– Searching for ‘Format: Font: Font Style: Bold’ (leaving all other fields blank)
– And replacing with ‘Font: Source Han Serif SC Heavy (fill in your own here, bold/italic), Not Bold’.
This last part of ‘Not Bold’ is the ‘font style’ field in the ‘Font Search and Replace menu’. This takes off the Bold applied by the MS Word ‘B’ formatting button but by choosing to replace it with the ‘Heavy Font variation’ it retains the proper formatting.
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