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• • September 2, 2019 at 1:22 pm #1183403
    Dianne Arnold

    Member

    Newbie here. I’m very familiar with WORD, Photoshop CC, Lightroom Classic, Bridge — and have only played with InDesign a bit. It has been suggested to me that InDesign would be a much better application for a book I’m working on. It’s a family history book with many chapters and lots of images.
    Experimenting with one of the shorter chapters to see if I can get up to speed on the basic features quickly enough to make this work. I made sure I had page breaks in the .docx file where I wanted them. There were no conflicts in Styles when I looked at the Input Options. So, I did File > Place. The text is mostly on the proper pages, but the images are all over the friggin’ place. The images are close to the correct page, but in a jumble and I can’t move them freely.
    It looks to me like the text came in and flowed properly through the document (I think that means I now have one big text box/frame on each page??)

    When I click on an image to try to move it to where I want it, I see the little anchor box and the circles in the middle (I understand that icon). I don’t understand how to “loosen” the ties that keep me from simply dragging the image to where I want it. I’ve googled and looked at help and still don’t know where to go next. So many of the tuts and help answers deal with building a document from scratch instead of handling the importing/placing of a WORD document. Yet I see references to InDesign users getting Word files from multiple writers and having to wrestle them into an InDesign file.

    I apologize for the length of this query, but I’m just not finding the right resource to tap to deal with placing the images coming in with a Word doc. Would be grateful for some direction. I have access to KelbyOne and LinkedIn Learning etc. and I’ve done a basic InDesign course – now want specific help with bringing in WORD files.
    Thanks!!

  • September 2, 2019 at 1:51 pm #14324203
    Dieter Stockert

    Member

    I don’t think it’s a good idea to import images from Word to InDesign, because Word will reduce their resolution. That’s why I have never done that. But to your question: Is there an anchor icon on top of the image frames? What happens if you right click on an image?

  • September 2, 2019 at 2:26 pm #14324202
    Dianne Arnold

    Member

    Hmmm – are you sure that the act of “Place” a Word file in InDesign reduces the resolution? I’m using current versions of both applications. I will have to check that out because I really don’t want that outcome.
    However, yes there is an anchor icon on top of the image frames. Right-clicking on the image shows me quite a long context menu — I don’t know what to do with it.

  • September 2, 2019 at 7:34 pm #14324201
    Dieter Stockert

    Member

    It’s been a few years since I had to work with Microsoft Word and I don’t have Word on my computer, so I cannot check it out, but it seems that there are settings to prevent Word from reducing the image resolution:
    https://support.office.com/en-us/article/turn-off-picture-compression-81a6b603-0266-4451-b08e-fc1bf58da658
    That will only help before placing the images in a Word document. But placing a Word document in InDesign should not reduce the image quality (at least I think so).
    Which options do you have when you right click on an image?

  • September 4, 2019 at 2:21 am #14324194
    Peggy Mikkelsen

    Member

    I know this post is late but I just found a good article about this subject: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3153419/why-extracting-images-from-word-is-so-hard-with-3-decent-workarounds.html. If you don’t have time to read the complete article scroll down to “Eureka: Export to PDF.”

    I also tested by placing a 9 MB file into Word then saving and placing that file into Indesign. I copied that image placeholder so I’d have the exact size then placed the original 9 MB file into the frame. The effective ppi of the Microsoft Word image was 406 but the original image was 798. So it seems there is some loss.

    Hope this helps.

  • September 4, 2019 at 1:17 pm #14324187
    Dianne Arnold

    Member

    Thanks, Peggy, for that reference. That certainly complicates the idea of taking in a WORD document with images already in it.

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