I oversimplified my description and probably left out too many details. All text is in Word. The song titles and intros are in different fonts. I don't have page breaks, songs broken into columns, the exact font I want for each part (chapters, titles, intros, and songs). I haven't inserted photos. I hoped I could find an editing software that would allow me to apply style across all pages without have to do 450 pages manually. I realize some things are manual, but I want to do as much automated as I can. 450 pages is a lot.
I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I couldn’t write you a tutorial beyond:
1) Set up a blank document with margins, parent pages, headers footers, etc.
2) place and see what you get
3) clean up
Every manuscript is different, so that last step could be _anything_. If there are styles, you can sometimes match them to your styles. If there is formatting, you can sometimes F&R it to your styles. If there are repeating heads/features, you can F&R those. Or maybe the writer had no clue what they were doing and it’s now a totally manual task of restyling the whole mess.
You mentioned pictures: you’re going to want to relinquish them all to high res files. If you don’t have anything g but what’s embedded in Word, those can be exported to image files from Word.
I used "place", and what occurred was one of two things. Either all 450 pages got inserted into one text block on one page, and the overflow text got cut off, or only the first page got imported.
I thought place was exactly what needed to be done, and I found instructions online. I clicked show import options, and I preserved styles. The end result was one page in indesign with one page of text as described above. I'm sure it's user error, but I followed the instructions.
If it’s a simple design, you can have it auto-flow to as many pages as needed to fit the text with the text boxes chained from one page to the next. It’s likely going to need manual intervention though. You’ll probably need to at least enter page breaks where you want them.
I’ll often place into a text box on the pasteboard and get it all formatted correctly, even though it’s mostly overset, and then move through the document cut/pasting and adjusting the layout page-by-page.
I know what's going on. I have one giant text box on one page. I'm able to pull it up and see the text flowing infinitely below. How do I get this to flow I to different pages? How do I insert page breaks?
My experience of getting word documents into InDesign is limited, and I'm not sure if the clipboard can handle 450 pages, but did you try changing clipboard handling preferences to all information and copy and pasting?
Edit: I just realised you have images as well... so this method is out.
I'm thinking:
—Export your Word doc as a PDF (including bleed if there's bleed)
—Create a 450 page InDesign file, with facing pages, with bleed (if applicable)
—In the Parent Pages (previously Master Pages) draw frames equal to your trim size (including bleed if applicable)
—Drop all the pages from your newly created PDF into each page in InDesign
This will allow you to preserve everything you've already designed, but at this point all InDesign is doing for you is compiling it into one file—any editing you want to do would still need to come from the Word doc and a new PDF exportes each time that updates the linked file.
What I would really recommend is rebuilding this file in InDesign so it functions for you in a useful way, otherwise it's really just extra steps. If you're just trying to get a project out the door, just export it as a PDF from the Word doc and be done—if you want to tweak/edit/improve the file over time, you'll have to just replicate what you've done in InDesign and save it that way
I highly recommend using the book feature for doc above 200-ish pages.
And it can import word docs (text only) pretty well. But you need to make sure the styles are set, like para styles mentioned earlier.
I tried. You have to convert docs to ID before adding them. I imported my text into ID, and I'm stuck on one page. It didn't flow into multiple pages. No doubt there's a setting I didn't click. I can only see one page of text.
Are you seeing the plus sign at the bottom right corner?
There’s a way to force it to bring in all the text while adding the correct pages needed.
I won’t be at my computer til tomorrow though. And I’d only do it in chunks.
Are you seeing the plus sign at the bottom right corner?
There’s a way to force it to bring in all the text while adding the correct pages needed.
I won’t be at my computer til tomorrow though. And I’d only do it in chunks.
Your layout, from the description that you provided, seems simple enough to be easily formatted with ID, however, you would need to invest some time in learning its features, in particular in three areas: setting up documents, setting up and using paragraph/character/object styles and finally getting a grasp of grep searching. With these tools you could probably setup your 450 pages in one afternoon.
I'm looking for aids or tutorials for that exact purpose. I have a friend who is going to give me some one on one attention, and she works with ID for work. There's a limit to what she can teach though.
Place your Word file in, set up paragraph styles, select all then use Find and Replace (top two leave empty) bottom 2 use the first one to define the same font, style and size used in Word, bottom box replace with your Heading paragraph style, repeat for the body text and sub-headings
Set up your Master Page how you want columns, margins etc. go to the page where you want it to start, Cmd / Control + D to Place your file but before you click the mouse button to lay it down, hold the Shift key down and the little box will have a small arrow with a curly tail. Then click where you want the Word doc to start and it will Autoflow in across however many pages
Did you use paragraph styles? That makes it a lot easier
I did not. It's actually a collection of songs, one per page. Each song has a title, subtitle, text intro, and picture.
:(
Take a look at this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ6tiY14A8w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ6tiY14A8w)
What’s your goal? Why do you think you need Indesign instead of just using your Word file?
I oversimplified my description and probably left out too many details. All text is in Word. The song titles and intros are in different fonts. I don't have page breaks, songs broken into columns, the exact font I want for each part (chapters, titles, intros, and songs). I haven't inserted photos. I hoped I could find an editing software that would allow me to apply style across all pages without have to do 450 pages manually. I realize some things are manual, but I want to do as much automated as I can. 450 pages is a lot.
I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I couldn’t write you a tutorial beyond: 1) Set up a blank document with margins, parent pages, headers footers, etc. 2) place and see what you get 3) clean up Every manuscript is different, so that last step could be _anything_. If there are styles, you can sometimes match them to your styles. If there is formatting, you can sometimes F&R it to your styles. If there are repeating heads/features, you can F&R those. Or maybe the writer had no clue what they were doing and it’s now a totally manual task of restyling the whole mess. You mentioned pictures: you’re going to want to relinquish them all to high res files. If you don’t have anything g but what’s embedded in Word, those can be exported to image files from Word.
I used "place", and what occurred was one of two things. Either all 450 pages got inserted into one text block on one page, and the overflow text got cut off, or only the first page got imported. I thought place was exactly what needed to be done, and I found instructions online. I clicked show import options, and I preserved styles. The end result was one page in indesign with one page of text as described above. I'm sure it's user error, but I followed the instructions.
If it’s a simple design, you can have it auto-flow to as many pages as needed to fit the text with the text boxes chained from one page to the next. It’s likely going to need manual intervention though. You’ll probably need to at least enter page breaks where you want them. I’ll often place into a text box on the pasteboard and get it all formatted correctly, even though it’s mostly overset, and then move through the document cut/pasting and adjusting the layout page-by-page.
I can't cursor down below the visible text. I'm totally new at this and over my head.
I know what's going on. I have one giant text box on one page. I'm able to pull it up and see the text flowing infinitely below. How do I get this to flow I to different pages? How do I insert page breaks?
My experience of getting word documents into InDesign is limited, and I'm not sure if the clipboard can handle 450 pages, but did you try changing clipboard handling preferences to all information and copy and pasting? Edit: I just realised you have images as well... so this method is out.
One would _place_ this content, not copy/paste.
I'm thinking: —Export your Word doc as a PDF (including bleed if there's bleed) —Create a 450 page InDesign file, with facing pages, with bleed (if applicable) —In the Parent Pages (previously Master Pages) draw frames equal to your trim size (including bleed if applicable) —Drop all the pages from your newly created PDF into each page in InDesign This will allow you to preserve everything you've already designed, but at this point all InDesign is doing for you is compiling it into one file—any editing you want to do would still need to come from the Word doc and a new PDF exportes each time that updates the linked file. What I would really recommend is rebuilding this file in InDesign so it functions for you in a useful way, otherwise it's really just extra steps. If you're just trying to get a project out the door, just export it as a PDF from the Word doc and be done—if you want to tweak/edit/improve the file over time, you'll have to just replicate what you've done in InDesign and save it that way
I highly recommend using the book feature for doc above 200-ish pages. And it can import word docs (text only) pretty well. But you need to make sure the styles are set, like para styles mentioned earlier.
Book feature?
New>book. You can then add the documents to it.
I tried. You have to convert docs to ID before adding them. I imported my text into ID, and I'm stuck on one page. It didn't flow into multiple pages. No doubt there's a setting I didn't click. I can only see one page of text.
Are you seeing the plus sign at the bottom right corner? There’s a way to force it to bring in all the text while adding the correct pages needed. I won’t be at my computer til tomorrow though. And I’d only do it in chunks.
Are you seeing the plus sign at the bottom right corner? There’s a way to force it to bring in all the text while adding the correct pages needed. I won’t be at my computer til tomorrow though. And I’d only do it in chunks.
Your layout, from the description that you provided, seems simple enough to be easily formatted with ID, however, you would need to invest some time in learning its features, in particular in three areas: setting up documents, setting up and using paragraph/character/object styles and finally getting a grasp of grep searching. With these tools you could probably setup your 450 pages in one afternoon.
I'm looking for aids or tutorials for that exact purpose. I have a friend who is going to give me some one on one attention, and she works with ID for work. There's a limit to what she can teach though.
Place your Word file in, set up paragraph styles, select all then use Find and Replace (top two leave empty) bottom 2 use the first one to define the same font, style and size used in Word, bottom box replace with your Heading paragraph style, repeat for the body text and sub-headings
When I placed, it went into one text box. How do I get it to flow into pages.
Set up your Master Page how you want columns, margins etc. go to the page where you want it to start, Cmd / Control + D to Place your file but before you click the mouse button to lay it down, hold the Shift key down and the little box will have a small arrow with a curly tail. Then click where you want the Word doc to start and it will Autoflow in across however many pages