Importing or placing "tagged text" with style in InDesign

[robert...@adobeforums.com]

Let me begin by noting, I'm not a techician or programmer, just someone who used Pagemaker for about 10 years and now InDesign for the past 18 months.

Our office publishes Washington State University's internal newspaper via InDesign. And, as you might imagine, we use a standard, repeating set of paragraph and character styles.

THE CHALLENGE: Our office has been trying for months to figure out how to import OR "place" copy into our standard InDesign document, so that copy comes in reflecting the correct paragraph OR character style tags. Example:

[mikewitherell_at_jetsetcom_dot_net]

What produces your copy that you are placing into InDesign?

Do you want to learn:

a. InDesign tagged text format

or

b. How to coordinate Paragraph and Character styles between InDesign and Word?

The latter might be easier to implement.

Mike Witherell in Washington DC

[robert...@adobeforums.com]

The copy is produced in MS Word or WordPerfect.

Re: which method or process do we want to use... I'm not sure, because we haven't been able to get anything to work so far.

I would like to use whatever method would allow us to handle this process "the most efficiently over the long haul."

We import/place about 50 articles in each newspaper issue which we publish every two weeks. And, each article has a multitude of little items or pieces that have to be hand manipulated ... i.e. headlines, subheads, text, etc. all have to be individually highlighted and the paragraph style designated.

So, from your perspective, what process would be the best to pursue?

AND, does it matter whether we are running InDesign 2.03 or InDesign CS????? Do we need to upgrade to CS in order to make this process possible.

Robert Frank
Washington State University

[Ti...@adobeforums.com]

Assuming you can't get the styles working between InDesign and Word, how about using a macro/VBA script in Word? Have the script do a search and replace based on styles used in Word to add the Indesign tags around the previously styled text and save as a text file.

[robert...@adobeforums.com]

To: Tim F, Phillyjoe, etc:

Where can I find documentation... a "simple" step-by-step, "how to" explanation that can walk my associate editor and I through how to "map," create and import "tagged text."

The text will be created in MS Word or WordPerfect (whichever works best and easiest) and will be imported into InDesign CS.

Based on recommendations to make this process easier, we went ahead and upgraded, to ID CS.

In Pagemaker, this was an easy and highly useful process. But, we can't seem to make heads of tails of it in InDesign.

Again, a simple step-by-step explanation would be great.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Ti...@adobeforums.com]

Your example isn't showing up, but assuming you have a series of different styles in Word say headline, normal, byline etc you get it ready for import as tagged text by following these steps.

1. run a series of Find and replace commands in Word. Use the "more" button to show you all the find options. Then choose "style" to find whatever text has the style you want to map to InDesign. In the Replace field, type "<ParaStyle:InDesign Style Name>^&" This tells Word to find all the text with the style you've chosen, then puts the InDesign Tag for the corresponding InDesign Style name in front of the selected text.

2. Once you have done this for all your styles. Type this at the top of your document (assuming you are on a PC): <ASCII-WIN>

3. Save the document as plain text.

4. Now you can place the document into InDesign and the style listed will be applied.

5. Once you get the Find/Replace steps working like you want, record them as a Word Macro and you should be all set.

A few things to be aware of - handling special formatting (bold, italic, superscript etc) can be a bit tricky this way. This assumes the Word document is very consistently formatted. If it isn't, this won't work well.

[robert...@adobeforums.com]

Tim F:

Thanks for the message back. This is the first time we've been able to begin getting a handle on this process. I think we are close, which is way exciting on our end.

We created several "text styles" in Word on the PC and went through the steps and process you described above. However, when we imported this file into ID on the Mac, the styles weren't "applied." Here's what the test file looked like.

Any tips?

Robert Frank
WSU Today
Washington State University
<ASCII-WIN>
<ParaStyle:text>A group of
researchers in the School of Mechanical and
Materials Engineering received a $1 million grant
to create a heat transfer device at the nanoscale
for use in micro-electrical mechanical systems.
They hope such a device could someday be used to
alleviate a number of problems in microscale
devices, such as the overheating of computer
chips.
<ParaStyle:text>
Researchers on the project include Cecilia
Richards, Robert Richards, David Bahr, and Sinisa
Mesarovic from the School of Mechanical and
Materials Engineering; Daniel Chiang, professor
in mechanical engineering from WSU-Vancouver; Jun
Jiao, from Portland State University; and
Mohammed Osman, from the School of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science. Support for the
project comes from the National Science
Foundation痴 Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research
Team.

<ParaStyle:subhead>shoes
<ParaStyle:text>The researchers are working to
use carbon nanotubes as a thermal switch to
better control heat transfer both spatially and
temporally. Carbon nanotubes were discovered
within the last two decades and are the best
thermal conductors known. They are ideal for
transferring heat. The thermal switches will be
built in the WSU clean room.

Using the nanotubes on a tiny computer chip would
allow one to heat up a specific portion of a
computer chip and avoid heating other areas that
might be sensitive to overheating. They could
also be used in other areas, such as DNA
analysis, which requires heating and cooling of
DNA to separate it. Being able to very carefully
control the heating and cooling in tiny samples
would allow for quicker analysis.

<ParaStyle:subhead>another
<ParaStyle:text>Most immediately, the thermal
switch could be used in the micro-heat engine
recently developed at WSU. Thinner than a piece
of paper and fitting inside the hole of a
Lifesaver, the engine is radically different in
design, fabrication, and operation of any
existing engine and could someday be used as a
replacement for batteries. The micro-engine
currently uses a liquid metal to transfer heat
from one layer to another, allowing the engine to
generate electricity. The carbon nanotubes, which
are 1/1,000 times the diameter of a strand of
hair, are expected to work about 100 times more
efficiently than liquid metal.

溺oving into nanotechnology research is a logical
growth area for WSU,鋳 said Bahr. 典his is one
step toward keeping Washington and the Pacific
Northwest well-positioned in this area.鋳

[Ti...@adobeforums.com]

Robert,

Glad it's getting closer. A couple of things to watch out for:
- make sure the style names you use in the import document exactly match the styles defined in InDesign. This includes being case sensitive and matching spaces etc.

- If it still doesn't work, try creating a new document in InDesign. Enter a few lines of text, then apply the styles you are using. Then export the frame as InDesign Tagged Text (select the contents of the frame, then choose "File", "Export" and select InDesign Tagged Text as the format.) Once you've exported the file, open it in simple text, and compare it to what you have from your Word process. You will see a lot of stuff near the top of the file, which is how InDesign exports the styles. You don't need that in your input file as long as the styles are already defined in the new InDesign Document.

[robert...@adobeforums.com]

Tim F:

We're still pursuing the tagged text style application.

I created a document in InDesign, exported it, printed it out and compared. With the exception of the big wad of coding at the top, there doesn't seem to be any difference, as far as I can tell.

Question 1: We create most of our copy on a PC in MS Word. Then send the file to our Mac for design. So, what tag should be put at the top <ASCII-MAC> OR <ASCII-WIN> ... I've tried it both ways, but at least knowing this will cut our number of test files in half.

Question 2. When we save the document as "plain text", Word also asks to designate whether the copy will be "MS-DOS" or "Windows default" or "Other" (like US ASCII). Which do we want to designate when saving?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks for your help.

Bob Frank
WSU

[robert...@adobeforums.com]

Tim F:

Update. We're part way there. The headlines, subhead and text tags now are coming in and being applied. However, we can't seem to get the bolding and italics to be applied.

Any suggestions there.

Thanks for your patients and help.

Bob Frank
WSU

[mikewitherell_at_jetsetcom_dot_net]

Bob,

Another thought that I remembered from recent reading: Go visit www.scriptorium.com and check out there automations for cleaning up word docs. One of them, for example, would convert all directly formatted bold and italics into Bold and Italic character styles, making them better behaved in InDesign. If you are handy at word macros, you could make this yourself.

[mikewitherell_at_jetsetcom_dot_net]

Why bother with this cumbersome process? Take some text in InDesign that has all your styles tagged to it (both Paragraph and Character styles) and export it as an rtf file. Open this in Word and note that the styles will populate into the Word doc style editor. Save this as a template, akin to normal.dot. Edit the stylesheets so that none of the style names are based on Normal, if any. It is also a good idea to avoid style names that match Word's automatic style names, too, btw. Use this file to do your prep work writing and editing. Then, simply File > Place the word doc and the styles will match your InDesign document and the appearance will sort itself out immediately. Why fuss with InDesign tagging language?

[mikewitherell_at_jetsetcom_dot_net]

Oops,

Make that www.editorium.com. Sorry!

Mike Witherell

[robert...@adobeforums.com]

Day three in pursuing tagged text and that results in applied styles. sigh... Any help would be appreciated. I'd be happy to call anyone who could solve our dilemma.

We have created all the necessary tagged styles in MS Word that we use in ID .... However, when you're trying to create or edit new or existing documents in MS Word, these formatting/styles don't appear.

They only seem to be available when we open the document or template those styles were created in conjunction with.

If we open up a new file or an existing word document that has been sent to us, none of the newly created styles and formatting appear in the MS Word style list.

We also tried the approach Mike Witherell suggested just above. When we opened the document from ID, all the styles and formatting categories were there. Voila. That was very cool.

However, the same thing happened when we opened up a new document or opened up a word document that was sent to us.... all the styles and formatting we want for ID disappear. It all goes back to the "normal" settings.

Is there a way to create an ID styles and formatting list in Word that would be available to use in editing new documents.

It seems like we're really close, but must be missing something little.

Bob Frank
Washington State University

[mikewitherell_at_jetsetcom_dot_net]

Doesn't word have an Organizer where you can open 2 docs and share styles between them (fairly) quickly?

[robert...@adobeforums.com]

REGARDING THE PREVIOUS MESSAGE, ANOTHER POSSIBILITY:

OR DO WE JUST OPEN UP THE MS WORD DOCUMENT WITH THE NEW STYLES/FORMATTING IN IT, THEN COPY AND PASTE IN TEXT FROM ARTICLES WE'RE TRYING TO EDIT, OR CREATE A NEW ARTICLE AND EACH TIME DO A SAVE AS AND GIVE IT A NEW NAME?

BOB FRANK

[robert...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks to Tim F and Mike Witherell for your help. The copy and paste method seems to work the fastest and easiest and it's functioning.

One last question. Although we are using Word to accomplish this, our preferred word processing program is WordPerfect, for numerous reasons.

So, my QUESTION is, has anyone set up a similar tagged/styles system in WORDPERFECT?

I've made a few attempts, but I can't get ID to import anything we've created in WordPerfect, even if we "save as" an MS Word document. I know PageMaker used to take in WordPerfect documents without a hitch... as we did that for 10 years. But so far, we haven't been able to get ID to place anything out of WordPerfect.

Thanks in advance for your insights.