Reply To: Problems Importing Word into InDesign …

Hi A.-M.,

I've had problematic Word files where I started with removing images, then converted all notes to endnotes, then converted all tables to plain text … until at the end I was left with, really, about as plain as a document could be. It still did not import into CS4.

Since then I only try save-as-RTF, and if that fails I immediately hop over to 'the old computer' with CS3 :( Today, I tried the import-as-RTF trick, first on CS4 (it crashed), then on CS3 (it thought for a while, then entirely ignored the import command, doing nothing at all). Fortunately, I thought of trying the original Word file again, in CS3 — the very last thing I tried, and of course that worked.

Oh — if a document does import but there is nothing visible, I fixate the local formatting with character styles and then strip all of the other formatting. That usually does the job.