Reply To: Creating a book from a Word manuscript

Jan, there’s an essential script that does exactly what you ask and more. Even better, it ships with InDesign.

Bring your text into InDesign from the Word document, then select all the text. Press Ctl-Alt-F11 (on Windows, Cmd-Opt-F11 on Mac) to bring up the Scripts Panel. Twirl open the “Application” set, then “Javascript.” Scroll down until you come to “Find/Change by List” and double-click to run it.

This script removes all the usual author errors: empty lines (including lines with extra white space), changes double spaces to single, double hyphens to n-dashes, and lots more. David provides lots more information about this and the other scripts that ship with InDesign here: https://creativepro.com/default-sample-scripts-indesign.php