How to import Word text into InDesign without losing basic formatting

[@frankderbar6746]

Thank you so much! This just saved me 100+ hours for setting the italics manually.

[@dreamtowermedia5301]

Man, SO HELPFUL. Thank you very much for this. Also, you cracked me up with "beyond any sane person's understanding." How often I have felt that way when using programs!

[@nukefactory]

Glad it was helpful

[@billpholde4816]

I just created a 208 page catalog in InDesign using word docs. The italics and super scripting were a goddamn nightmare. Could've used this! Thank you for this incredibly useful video!!!!!

[@eaglegirl9879]

THANK YOU!!! you saved me so much work! footnotes and endnotes suddenly appear perfectly.

[@nukefactory]

That's great, glad it was helpful.

[@atlanteum]

As a literal first-time-as-of-today user, Thank You for all of your videos demystifying inDesign!

[@nukefactory]

You're very welcome!

[@jansoul]

Finally a tutorial that solved the problem. THANK YOU!

[@nukefactory]

You're welcome!

[@galgalonce]

Excellent, thank you! Keep it up man good stuff and very well delivered

[@lalon2337]

instantly subscribed to your channel. thank you so much. I wish my teacher in the university taught me this.

[@johnhall4050]

Thanks so much. I've been using InDesign for 20 years (and Quark before it) but the crap Word files some of my clients send me still stump me on this sometimes., and I always need a refresher on some of this.

[@wowfactorpix]

Thank you very much for this tutorial. Just what I needed to know when importing Google Docs files saved locally as .RTF (with basic formatting like italics and bold) and then into my InDesign document, and having the basic formatting honoured and converted to InDesign character styles.

[@syhrlhlmy]

Hi, I have the issue like you. Just a question, did you able to keep all the formatting from Google Docs (including italics/bold) when place RTF text file in InDesign?

[@shannonedens7854]

Thank you! I have to format a glossary of 1000 items over about 120 pages, so this really helped!

[@nukefactory]

That sounds... fun. Hope it all went smoothly for you.

[@hestervantoorenburg895]

This has been extremely helpful! Thank you!

[@kristinawikoff-edstrom1408]

Thank you so much!!! This is awesome- and very much appreciated that you took the time to make this video- so helpful!

[@nukefactory]

Glad it was helpful!

[@darrenwalters9886]

Super useful help to incredibly frustrating problems. Just, thank you.

[@nukefactory]

Glad it helped!

[@Hpiv6]

Very well explained, thanks.

[@galgalonce]

Thanks again sir! If I could like it again I would

[@biancamera828]

thank you!!!!!!!!!!! you really saved my life. god bless you

[@leekubis1542]

Thank you so much for this tutorial!

[@nukefactory]

Glad it was helpful!

[@clairesavill-boundy3697]

Thank you for sharing, very helpful.

[@infographie]

Excellent.

[@Paulic64]

Great video. But when I follow these steps and place my word doc, it doesn't look anything like my word file? All the formatting is gone completely. Can anyone advise?

[@deadpixelguardian]

Thank you very much! This is very useful. Please tell me if there is a way to change the text size only for the footnotes, taking in account that footnotes have italic, bold and regular text. Thank you!

[@nukefactory]

Do you mean the actual footnote text at the bottom of the frame? If so, you only need to apply a separate 'Footnote' Paragraph Style (for example) to the footnote text, you can set it to whatever size is needed. As long as you have selected the 'Include Footnotes' button in the 'Find/Change' dialog when replacing the inline styling with your Character Styles, the bolds & italics should be preserved the same as in the main body. If, however, you're referring to the footnote markers in the body text (usually super-scripted numbers) and these have more variations than just Superscript, then you'll need to create Character Styles for each variation of the inline styling that you need to preserve, and just run through them with Find/Change (eg Superscript, Superscript Bold, Superscript Italic etc.) It's tedious, but once it's done, it's done, at least. My sympathies if you're dealing with too many documents like that.

[@DesignPixelmaster]

aweeesome, thank you so much :)

[@jorty.]

Workind with Indesign CC and find/change cant find any match....no idea what I do wrong but I followed your instruction to the letter. Any ideas?

[@mirjanaobednikovska7661]

love your tutorial thank you

[@AIRLINE500]

Hi, I followed your method, which worked brilliantlyThe problem, tho, was when there were changes in the MS Word document. I placed the document with the option of it being a link. When it gets changed and I need to update the link inside InDesign it warns me all edits will be lost, I click Ok and, an, in fact, all the changes I did are gone, or even worse, some are there, some are lost, the thing becomes a mess. Do you know any workaround I can use, please?

[@nukefactory]

There is a program called Wordsflow (emsoftware.com/products/wordsflow/) which may be able to do what you're looking for. I tested it a few years ago and it didn't really cover what was needed in that situation-not a bad program, just not the solution we needed-so I can't exactly vouch for it, but it might be of use to you. I think they have a free trial so you can test it out, anyway.

[@mordechailewis7201]

Thank you for this 4:24!

[@DerCribben]

Hi Nukefactory, at 2:42 right after you select the "Show import options" box, you also deselect the "replace selected item" box, is this important and what does it do? This tutorial saved me BTW, thanks for the great content!

[@nukefactory]

With 'Replace selected item' checked, if you have an object selected in the InDesign document, InDesign will replace that with the new element that you're placing. So it's useful if you want to just insert a new element in place of an existing one, but kind of a liability otherwise - if you accidentally leave something selected then it'll be replaced. So I'm just in the habit of un-checking it, that's all.

[@DerCribben]

@@nukefactory thanks for this, makes total sense. I'm just getting going with InDesign so (nearly) everything's at least a little confusing, so I appreciate you sharing your logic. Cheers!

[@DerCribben]

@@nukefactory am I crazy or did you used to have an InDesign course you were selling? I swear I just saw it the other day in the description text in this video, but I might be remembering someone else. If it was you, are you just taking it down to revamp, or is it gone for good? Thanks for all your help!

[@nukefactory]

Thanks for the kind words. Haven't had any courses for sale, though. Possibly might attempt that sometime in the future, if time allows.

[@nives5067]

Thank you!

[@BarbaraBlocksberg]

Please note - importing text like this does not guarantee that you keep all formatting. If the author of the word document used a paragraph style that for example has already "bold" in the paragraph style, there will be no "bold" override applied and therefore the imported text in InDesign will appear as regular text and not as bold text.

[@dawit_kassahun]

I prefer to import with all the styles to be on the safe side

[@romakhabelashvili7875]

Thank uuu I love u

[@nukefactory]

Thanks

[@macguy14]

hmm, I did just as explained in the video and talics and bold were deleted when 'placed'. Don't know why.... Caps lock and size were preserved. The font calibre was not in ID, so it asked to 'change font', perhaps things were lost when the font didn't match. But would like to be able to change fonts without loosing the formatting.

[@nikiroberts1366]

Did you get this to work. I followed the video exactly and my copy comes in unformatted and create mystery styles in InDesign that are blank. How do I get this copy to flow in and retain the formating from the author. This is driving me mad!!!

[@nukefactory]

Changing the font would remove formatting if it cause the overrides to be removed. Not sure whether InDesign does that if the change is made via the 'Missing Font' dialog box. The missing font isn't a problem. You can just cancel the dialog box and then correct the issue via paragraph styles after first applying character styles to the override formats.

[@nukefactory]

Sorry you guys are having difficulties. You might not have the 'Preserve Local Overrides' set on import, which would cause that. BUT it could actually be that you have one of those rare unicorns - a properly-formatted Word doc. Have you tried importing with Style mapping in place? It might be that the file has all the styles setup correctly, in which case, awesome! The blank styles importing just happens sometimes. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.

[@macguy14]

@@nukefactory thanks for the thoughts, in the end cut and paste from Word kept all the styles, instead of 'placing' the document.

[@macguy14]

@@nikiroberts1366 cut and paste from word worked, kept the styles. then had to go in and create styles for everything incase one wants to change fonts

[@aang_arang]

when I try to place the word file all the words get jumbled together as if there are no spaces. Do you know how to fix this?

[@nukefactory]

Whatever style and type settings you have selected when placing text will be applied to the incoming text. It might be that the font you have specified in the [Basic Paragraph] style isn't available or is corrupted. Without anything selected, check the Paragraph, Character and Object Styles panels don't have anything unusual selected, and the font you have showing in the Character panel isn't coming up with [brackets] around its name, which indicates it's missing. Also have a look at the tracking and see if it's showing zero there - it's the VA with the two-headed arrow under it in the Character Panel, under the Leading settings. If all that's normal, with no change, then try a few different fonts on the text after to placing to see if that makes a difference. If that fixes it then you might have a corrupted font. If not, resetting preferences in InDesign can sometimes fix this type of issue.

[@AMagicGarden]

heroic

[@nukefactory]

Hold on, let me grab my cape :-). Glad it was helpful to you.

[@DanAspectDesign]

This works apart from it loses all the italics, which is basically the only formatting I care about . . .

[@nukefactory]

That's annoying. Sorry to hear it's not working for you. Italics should be preserved if settings from the video are used. Without more info it's not really possible to say why they're not.

[@semon9432]

this method is not working, try to import a book of 500 pages with footnotes, highlights, superscript and subscript and then reassign all styles to this

[@santosakowski9846]

INDESIGN sucks! Can't believe how ridiculously it was designed.

[@rocksreviewsreactions337]

I just wish you could upload your Word document into InDesign without loosing any footnotes, formatting, fonts, etc. I need full page pictures in our books, and Word is really not the best for full page pictures, but InDesign is giving us a hard time with getting our file from Word. Like come on, technology should be able to preform such a simple task as that.

[@annijagrosa3371]

Thank You!