WBB wrote:
This is an age-old problem for me… How do I get my Word styles to import nicely into InDesign without having to do all that manual formatting in InDesign to take out the stuff Word left behind? I create a style in InDesign, apply styles in Word, using the same exact name as I do in InDesign, then import the text into InDesign. But the imported text is not how it should look! It still has some Word formatting!
You may not realize it, but you almost certainly have some sort of local styling on top of your paragraph styles. Place your text cursor in some text and look in the Paragraph Styles palette; a plus sign next to the style name indicates local formatting (style “overrides”). Even better, if you hover the cursor over a style with a plus sign, it will show you what the local formatting is in a tool tip window.
As the tool tip points out, you can Option/Alt-click on the style name to clear the local formatting from this paragraph. But that’s not the whole story. If you want to clear both local formatting and any character style applied to the text, Shift-Option-click/Shift-Alt-click.
But the problem with both of these is that you have to place your cursor in a paragraph first, or select that one paragraph, or select more than one contiguous paragraph to clear and apply the style to all those paragraphs. So InDesign offers a better solution: The Clear Overrides button.
Let’s say someone changed the text for an entire story (headings, body text, and so on) by selecting all and changing the font size. That all shows up as local formatting, but it would be tedious to remove with the Option/Alt-click trick. Instead, select all (Command/Ctrl-A) and click the Clear Overrides button (or choose Clear Overrides from the Paragraph Style palette flyout menu).
Or, you can Command/Ctrl-click on the button to clear only character formatting overrides; or Command-Shift-click/Ctrl-Shift-click to clear only paragraph formatting overrides. (Personally, I never use these variations, but I suppose it’s nice to know they’re available.)
This article was last modified on December 18, 2021
This article was first published on February 2, 2007
Commenting is easier and faster when you're logged in!
