A company directory .. doesn't sound like there should be any weird features in it.
Check the Word file, anyway, for anything of the following:
- Automatic numbers. ID does not import these well (or “at all”). Convert to plain text — the Word Help tells you how.
- Tracked changes. They confuse InDesign, something like “So do you want this text or don't you? Make Up Yer Mind!”. 'Accept' all changes, then switch it off, to prevent further manipulating the file adding them again. Okay, this should probably have been Bullet Point #1 …
- Footnotes. You probably need them if they are in there, but InDesign really can't grok footnotes — especially the large, long kind, with tables and figures in them. You could go as far as temporary converting them to Endnotes, import the document, then convert them back to footnotes (manually or with a script — whatever it needs).
- Tables. ID cannot digest single huge filled cells. Word has no problem with those, breaking the page whereever it sees fit, but ID cannot, and chokes when you try to import one of these.
- Tables-in-tables. Some very strange things might happen. After importing your text, you can place tables in tables in tables (ad nauseum) but ID cannot, for unfathomable reasons, import them.
- Oh, and Endnotes also seem to have a sort of maximum length. Kind of odd, because ID does not support end notes, but … if they are too long, ID No Like.
Generally, when a Word doc takes ID to the edge of insanity, I try first to re-save the document from Word into RTF. Sometimes — but not always — this shakes something loose in the file, and suddenly every piece of the puzzle slides into place.
If that doesn't work either, I have a fully functional CS3 nearby. I hate to say it (again …) but someone changed something in the Word import filter between CS3 and CS4, and files that simply won't come in into CS4 import fast and flawless and also flawless (let me stress that) into CS3. I'll grant you that one of the visible import improvements is that Cross-references now come in as ID Cross-references, but, frankly, if that's all, I think I could have lived without those.
