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• • September 10, 2015 at 4:10 am #78018
    Ruben Solér

    Participant

    Hello all,

    I typeset a lot of academic books, and these are very uniform in style. Therefore, I have a set of paragraph and character styles that are the same for every book. The problem is that even though I have preloaded these to the empty ID document I use, I can’t get them to auto-apply to the text I import from Word documents.

    The editors style the Word document (in Word) before sending it to me, and so the paragraph styles I preload have identical names to the Word styles. Having read around a bit, I thought that the following procedure in the import options would ensure the ID styles overrode the Word styles: Import option > Custom style import > Style mapping, then making sure eg. Word style “Body” will be redefined by ID style “Body”.

    This doesn’t work unfortunately, as I get a ton of local overrides with this procedure. What *does* work after importing without preloaded styles, is selecting a paragraph with eg. imported Word style “Body” and applying ID style “Body” from CC libraries. This clears all the local overrides (which is okay). Doing it manually takes forever when you’re doing a 400 page book though. So what I always end up doing is importing the Word file into an empty ID document, without any preloaded styles, then editing the imported styles to how they should be. This works, but takes time and isn’t very efficient.

    Is there any settings in import options I can apply to have my preloaded ID styles apply to the document, without getting all kinds of local overrides?

    (PS: Sorry for the long post, this problem has been frustrating me for a long time…)

    Cheers

  • September 10, 2015 at 6:39 am #78021
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    We have a number of articles on this topic, such as:
    and
    https://creativepro.com/import-word-files-into-indesign-remove-local-formatting-but-keep-italics-and-bold.php
    and
    https://creativepro.com/clear-text-overrides-from-word-files.php
    and a video here:
    https://creativepro.com/mapping-word-styles-indesign-styles-free-video.php

    also, this post currently has a problem with the images, but we’re fixing it:
    https://creativepro.com/strip-the-crud-from-word-files-before-you-map-styles.php

    I also strongly recommend Anne-Marie’s excellent “Using InDesign and Word Together” course at lynda.com.

  • September 11, 2015 at 1:33 pm #78060
    Sarah H

    Member

    If you want to clear the overrides, one possible idea/work-around is to do a find/replace where you search for a particular paragraph style and replace it with the same paragraph style. For whatever reason, overrides are cleared when you do that. I realize it’s not the solution you’re looking for, but just an idea.

  • September 11, 2015 at 4:54 pm #78061
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    One of the best ways to remove overrides is just to select all (cmd-A) and then click the Remove Overrides button at the bottom of the paragraph styles panel.

  • September 16, 2015 at 1:20 am #78126
    Ruben Solér

    Participant

    Thank you so much, David. I should have done a more thorough search, sorry about that. I will definitely read up on those, so I’m prepared for my next incoming project. Anne-Marie’s lynda course also looks great, really looking forward to digging into that. Pretty happy I signed up recently :)

    Sarah and David: I’m always a tad nervous about clearing overrides, which is why my current life mission is to make sure the word files import the way they’re supposed to. Both of your tips are great for their purpose though, thanks!

    PS: I thought I posted a reply to this thread some days ago, but something must have happened. Didn’t mean to be late in responding!

    Edit: I know I said clearing local overrides is ok, I’m just a bit apprehensive about doing it globally. I guess with proper preparation it shouldn’t be a worry though.

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