Reply To: Making Index Markers by Changing a Character

Hello,

Most of the text we work with isn’t generated directly in InDesign it comes from text files, RTF files and more often then not Microsoft Word.There are a couple of ways to quickly get text from Word into InDesign.

1.One is to go to the Word file copy it and paste it right in.Doing that brings in no formating whatsoever by default in InDesign, just strips everything away and you get plain text.

2.The other option is to drag&drop from the Finder or Windows Explorer and that brings in all the formatting in the word file whether you want or not.

The only way to establish some kind of middle ground and a happy medium that gives you some measure of control over how the text and styles from word find their way into your InDesign document is to use the place command.

You will be using ‘Paragraph styles’ and ‘Character styles’ panels to improve your work.
To place the text go to File->Place->Navigate to the .doc file.Before clicking open, make sure that you turn on ‘Show Import Options’.Opens up Microsoft Word Import Options.Then try to choose Custom Style Import and Style Mapping.Then try choosing your index style (Microsoft Word Style) with several InDesign styles.

Hope this helps you!
Regards,
Atwork Abode