Expert: James Fritz - 1/17/2010

Question
At my newspaper, the reporters write their stories in Word that are then imported into our Indesign layout (using command D). The story often brings with it styles from that Word doc. I have set up styles in indesign for us to use but I find the best way is to delete the Word style and replace with the desired ones. Is there a way to stop these styles coming in in the first place?

Answer
Wanda,

You can control the import of styles by holding down the shift key when you place a word file into InDesign.

Inside the import dialog you can choose to either strip the formatting out or bring in the formatting.
What I recommend is that you keep the formatting but choose the option at at the bottom of the import options called "style mapping" which will let you map the word styles to your InDesign styles automatically. ex- word body text now becomes InDesign body text.

Another option that you might want to look into is to use Adobe InCopy which is the professional way for your editor and reporters to make edits to your InDesign layout.

I hope that helps.

Fritz
www.c2gps.com