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Format in Word First? or Import the docx first?


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I'm a newbie and I am enjoying the albeit intense learning curve. Fortunately, I've done enough formatting of manuscripts in Word that I can get around fairly well in regards to process. And I've worked with PhotoShop for years (and recently switched to Affinity Photo which is excellent). I'm currently working on a manuscript to turn into a book. It will require 5 x 8, some tweaks to leading, margins and such. I have to build all the bits ... I am using different sized fonts for the headings, and of course, there is front matter, etc. (roman vs. arabic). I'm loving how easy it appears it will be to do the odd/even, pagination, add blank pages in publisher ... something that makes building a book in word a nightmare. So, my question is: Do I go through the manuscript that is a 70 page Word.docx, keep its 8 1/2 x 11 size, make my decisions regarding paragraph style, fonts, spacing from top of page, etc, and then import? Or, do I just keep everything in the Word.docx, pick something like Times Roman, don't worry about heading spacing from top of page, the fonts, and, using the template, import all this into the 5 x 8 I create (haven't figured out which template that is in mm),  and use the studio to do all the necessary changes ie fonts, leading, baseline, etc.  It would certainly be a heckofalot simpler to just import the word doc as clean as possible, as just content, and then do all the other in publisher. In other words, just import the Word doc with as little formatting as possible and use Af-Publisher for everything else. 

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Do not format the Word document too much. Page properties etc (page size, margins, master pages, columns, styles) should be set in Publisher. 

The good old way would be to import Word document as "just text" and ignore formatting, flow text through pages, letting Publisher create new pages as necessary. Then select all and set all to body text. Then go though the text page by page and apply other styles as necessary.

More modern way would be to use Word styles after import – that would mean that Word document has styles used for headings, body, captions etc. Edit imported word styles or replace them by search tool as necessary.

Anyway, handling local styling is the hard part – you want to keep italics and bolds and super/subscripts but jettison all Word specific stuff that could cause trouble. There are different methods for that. I am not sure what is best way for Publisher as I still work mostly in InDesign.

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Importing Word is not supported. You can do it with a trick but that gave me quite a mess.

For me is the best:

  • Save the doc as pdf
  • Open the pdf in Publisher.
  • You will see it’s rather good.
  • The only problem is that text styles are not converted so you must add them.

 Later you can save this modified pdf as a separate file with just the text styles and perhaps master pages.

Just give it a try. It will cost you only 5 minutes.

 

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59 minutes ago, FredVN said:

How? Perhaps the laterst version? Some time ago it failed here.

Since 1.7.2? This is not a newly introduced feature ... if I am not completely wrong.

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Windows 10 | i5-8500 CPU | Intel UHD 630 Graphics | 32 GB RAM | Latest Retail and Beta versions of complete Affinity range installed

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I wouldn't do any formating in Word. It's much easier and better to do the formating in Publisher than to correct all the formatings, you made with Word, afterwards. If you insert images in your layout or you change the size of the text box, the margins and so on a little, all the preset formatings will be troublesome and cause a lot of unnecessary work anyway. Because of this I learned in my apprenticeship always to save source text in RTF (rich text format), that doesn't support formatings, so it will be absolut clean of formatings anyway.

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If I save text as RTF in LibreOffice, I always get a message that asks me if I really want to save as RTF, because it doesn't support formatings. Possibly a feature of Word? It's long a go that I worked with Word. Really don't know. But as far as I know, it's the same with TXT files. Don't know what Word does with it, but with LibreOffice also this works without formatings. Could be worth a test. Because the really important point is to prevent formatings in source text for layout projects, that only cause problems.

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1 minute ago, FredVN said:

So can somone please explain how I can open a docx-file?

I think I was not explaining precisely enough. You cannot open, but you can place a .docx. If APu has problems with your .docx you should upload it here or if confident, ask a moderator for a private upload link for further examination.

------
Windows 10 | i5-8500 CPU | Intel UHD 630 Graphics | 32 GB RAM | Latest Retail and Beta versions of complete Affinity range installed

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Just tested it with LibreOffice. It's true that RTF saves formatings. But TXT doesn't. So I would suggest to save source text for layouts as TXT (*.txt) file, to prevent formatings.

To explain: in my old company we had people that wrote the text, others made the photographs and graphics and others had to make layouts outoff that stuff (with QuarkXPress and InDesign). I was one of the last ones. As far as I remember the text I got was always in RTF format. But I maybe wrong. It was some years ago. The important thing was that the text always had to be unformated, because, if it was formated, it always caused a lot of unnecessary work that did cost a lot of time.

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39 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

I think I was not explaining precisely enough. You cannot open, but you can place a .docx. If APu has problems with your .docx you should upload it here or if confident, ask a moderator for a private upload link for further examination.

And that was exactly the reason of the messy Publisher document. 

That's why I started opening the pdf and have a single file with my text styles and master pages. 

At least for me this workflow is working perfect.

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5 hours ago, FredVN said:

Importing Word is not supported. You can do it with a trick but that gave me quite a mess.

For me is the best:

  • Save the doc as pdf
  • Open the pdf in Publisher.
  • You will see it’s rather good.
  • The only problem is that text styles are not converted so you must add them.

 Later you can save this modified pdf as a separate file with just the text styles and perhaps master pages.

Just give it a try. It will cost you only 5 minutes.

 

I haven't a clue as to why someone would do this. When I learned to format the book using Word.docx, and creating TOC, the headings, styles, odd/even, section breaks, pagination ... and saved as a pdf it was perfect. Why would I do all that just to put it into Af-publisher? I tested a pdf yesterday and tried to "just simply" edit (or add) pagination, text frames, etc and couldn't edit the page at all. So, the whole reason I am using Af-Publisher is to use the robust ability to do those things (fix Right-hand chapter starts, pagination, formatting of the header/footer) and as far as I can see, I can't do that at all. If I could save the word doc as a pdf THEN do all these additional things, that would be great. But I don't see that as a possibility. So, if you want to share with me how that works - how a pdf can be imported into the text frame - then all these other things added around the pdf, then great, I'll try it out. 

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4 hours ago, FredVN said:

When I use "Open", .docx-files are not shown.

Using "Place" gave the earlier mentioned mess.

So can somone please explain how I can open a docx-file?

Thanks.

You place in a text frame on the page, then click the triangle on the right, (with Mac, hold shift down, and there are tutorials) and the text flows thru the doc. 

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4 hours ago, FredVN said:

When I use "Open", .docx-files are not shown.

Using "Place" gave the earlier mentioned mess.

So can somone please explain how I can open a docx-file?

Thanks.

You make your Publisher Document and Place the .docx file into a text frame. You are correct in that Publisher cannot File > Open... .docx files.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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8 minutes ago, jamesgangcreative said:

I haven't a clue as to why someone would do this. When I learned to format the book using Word.docx, and creating TOC, the headings, styles, odd/even, section breaks, pagination ... and saved as a pdf it was perfect. Why would I do all that just to put it into Af-publisher? I tested a pdf yesterday and tried to "just simply" edit (or add) pagination, text frames, etc and couldn't edit the page at all. So, the whole reason I am using Af-Publisher is to use the robust ability to do those things (fix Right-hand chapter starts, pagination, formatting of the header/footer) and as far as I can see, I can't do that at all. If I could save the word doc as a pdf THEN do all these additional things, that would be great. But I don't see that as a possibility. So, if you want to share with me how that works - how a pdf can be imported into the text frame - then all these other things added around the pdf, then great, I'll try it out. 

 

8 minutes ago, jamesgangcreative said:

I haven't a clue as to why someone would do this. When I learned to format the book using Word.docx, and creating TOC, the headings, styles, odd/even, section breaks, pagination ... and saved as a pdf it was perfect. Why would I do all that just to put it into Af-publisher? I tested a pdf yesterday and tried to "just simply" edit (or add) pagination, text frames, etc and couldn't edit the page at all. So, the whole reason I am using Af-Publisher is to use the robust ability to do those things (fix Right-hand chapter starts, pagination, formatting of the header/footer) and as far as I can see, I can't do that at all. If I could save the word doc as a pdf THEN do all these additional things, that would be great. But I don't see that as a possibility. So, if you want to share with me how that works - how a pdf can be imported into the text frame - then all these other things added around the pdf, then great, I'll try it out. 

You can't import PDFs into text frames. But you can import them into image frames. But you should be carefull with PDFs. For example, I made the experience, that, if I copied text from a PDF I created myself, there were more spaces in the text than I inserted. That possibly had to do with the formating and how the PDF export interpreted it. I think, this kind of experiments with PDFs is a verry good way to create damaged files and bad layouts.

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The first book I made was in Word. I often `had problems with placing text and pictures. See the website of my daughter for a free demo version of the book: https://shielavandenbosch.com/small-companies-in-vietnam/

For my second book I already started in Word. Then I heard about Publisher, tried and bought it not so long ago. I wanted to continue my second book in AP. So I tried different solutions.

Placing the Word file. This gave a mess in the text.

Save the word-file as pdf. Open the pdf in AP.. The whole document looked great. So the only thing I had to do were:

  • Making a couple of master pages for standardization
  • Add a couple of text styles (a pdf don’t have them).
  • Go one time through the whole document and it was standard. Agree, it is some work the first time. But after that everything else I do, add etc. is based on the master pages and therefor standard.

 Perhaps it’s not suitable for you workflow, but for me it works.

Up to now I haven't had problems with more spaces. But it's absolutely a good idea to check that when opening your pds.          

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7 hours ago, Fixx said:

Do not format the Word document too much. Page properties etc (page size, margins, master pages, columns, styles) should be set in Publisher. 

The good old way would be to import Word document as "just text" and ignore formatting, flow text through pages, letting Publisher create new pages as necessary. Then select all and set all to body text. Then go though the text page by page and apply other styles as necessary.

More modern way would be to use Word styles after import – that would mean that Word document has styles used for headings, body, captions etc. Edit imported word styles or replace them by search tool as necessary.

Anyway, handling local styling is the hard part – you want to keep italics and bolds and super/subscripts but jettison all Word specific stuff that could cause trouble. There are different methods for that. I am not sure what is best way for Publisher as I still work mostly in InDesign.

This is the route I would go. If this is a large book with a lot of formatting I would do the extra work and use word styles. They save so much time once setup if you want to make adjustments to size, font, whatever. You can change the style you want and everything else changes to match. 

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1 hour ago, iconoclast said:

 

You can't import PDFs into text frames. But you can import them into image frames. But you should be carefull with PDFs. For example, I made the experience, that, if I copied text from a PDF I created myself, there were more spaces in the text than I inserted. That possibly had to do with the formating and how the PDF export interpreted it. I think, this kind of experiments with PDFs is a verry good way to create damaged files and bad layouts.

So, I create an image frame onto a page, then I can add text frames for headers, footers and pages on that same page? BTW, I created a page, inserted a text frame onto it, and did the place when I didn't know you couldn't do this, and it all placed fine. Just couldn't add any of the items listed above. 

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1 hour ago, FredVN said:

The first book I made was in Word. I often `had problems with placing text and pictures. See the website of my daughter for a free demo version of the book: https://shielavandenbosch.com/small-companies-in-vietnam/

For my second book I already started in Word. Then I heard about Publisher, tried and bought it not so long ago. I wanted to continue my second book in AP. So I tried different solutions.

Placing the Word file. This gave a mess in the text.

Save the word-file as pdf. Open the pdf in AP.. The whole document looked great. So the only thing I had to do were:

  • Making a couple of master pages for standardization
  • Add a couple of text styles (a pdf don’t have them).
  • Go one time through the whole document and it was standard. Agree, it is some work the first time. But after that everything else I do, add etc. is based on the master pages and therefor standard.

 Perhaps it’s not suitable for you workflow, but for me it works.

Up to now I haven't had problems with more spaces. But it's absolutely a good idea to check that when opening your pds.          

The "adding a couple master pages for standardization" is the "just simply" part that didn't work. I created the pub doc, placed the pdf and wanted to "add a couple master pages for standardization" which I thought I did. but the pagination did not appear. Or the test of the header's did not appear. I created the master page and the text frames, the number # shows up, but not on the pages that now have the pdf on them. So, any help (steps vs. concept) would be appreciated. Thanks. 

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8 hours ago, Fixx said:

Do not format the Word document too much. Page properties etc (page size, margins, master pages, columns, styles) should be set in Publisher. 

The good old way would be to import Word document as "just text" and ignore formatting, flow text through pages, letting Publisher create new pages as necessary. Then select all and set all to body text. Then go though the text page by page and apply other styles as necessary.

More modern way would be to use Word styles after import – that would mean that Word document has styles used for headings, body, captions etc. Edit imported word styles or replace them by search tool as necessary.

Anyway, handling local styling is the hard part – you want to keep italics and bolds and super/subscripts but jettison all Word specific stuff that could cause trouble. There are different methods for that. I am not sure what is best way for Publisher as I still work mostly in InDesign.

PS I did some experimentation and the word.docx goes in nicely EXCEPT I cannot get the bottom margin to match the baseline. The author wants 12/16 pt or thereabouts, I've been playing with all the refinements, but I cannot get all of the ten pages (of one chapter, and the book is about 110 pages) to all match. I can tweak individual lines, or paragraphs, or the entire thing, but not all pages will line up with the base. So, that's the next step. Otherwise, the word doc flows in nicely. 

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1 minute ago, jamesgangcreative said:

... I created the pub doc, placed the pdf and wanted to "add a couple master pages for standardization" which I thought I did. but the pagination did not appear. ...

You have to apply the Master Page(s) to the pages after you make a Master Page. It sounds as though this may be the problem. The other possible thing is that your PDF pages are covering up the page numbers.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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1 minute ago, jamesgangcreative said:

he word.docx goes in nicely EXCEPT I cannot get the bottom margin to match the baseline.

There is a Baseline grid function in Publisher, there is the per page Baseline Grid and the Per Text Frame Baseline Grid. Then there is the Use the baseline grid option in the Paragraph Styles.

1336288052_ScreenShot2021-04-13at9_09_04AM.png.d9425c685b82847098596d30a9737fc5.png

 

 

1681313671_ScreenShot2021-04-13at9_09_54AM.png.c028f130c527dcdc0521a376164718b2.png

To add to you confusion there are also flow options in the Paragraph Styles which will keep the paragraph together. Then there are also Widows and Orphans settings which prevent the single line appearing on its own at the bottom or top of a page of text.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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28 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

There is a Baseline grid function in Publisher, there is the per page Baseline Grid and the Per Text Frame Baseline Grid. Then there is the Use the baseline grid option in the Paragraph Styles.

1336288052_ScreenShot2021-04-13at9_09_04AM.png.d9425c685b82847098596d30a9737fc5.png

 

 

1681313671_ScreenShot2021-04-13at9_09_54AM.png.c028f130c527dcdc0521a376164718b2.png

To add to you confusion there are also flow options in the Paragraph Styles which will keep the paragraph together. Then there are also Widows and Orphans settings which prevent the single line appearing on its own at the bottom or top of a page of text.

Yes, I tried all that. I'll keep tweaking. 

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