Formatting text either before or after placing in Publisher

[RickyO]

Using Publisher 2.3.1. I'm pretty much a beginner.

I've written the text I will be laying into my Publisher document in MS Word 2019.  I can format it quite quickly in Word.

Functioinally, i.e. with the least amount of thereafter editing, I'm wondering if it is better to lay it all in/flow it, all in one style and then format headers etc; or, if it's better to format in Word and then lay it in.  Just hoping to save a few hours of uninformed production time.

Thanks in advance.

[Old Bruce]

12 minutes ago, RickyO said:

Functioinally, i.e. with the least amount of thereafter editing, I'm wondering if it is better to lay it all in/flow it, all in one style and then format headers etc; ...  Just hoping to save a few hours of uninformed production time.

This is the way I work. I also just use Plain Text with home made Tags at the beginning of each Paragraph that is not the bulk of the body text. Everything is set to my Bulk Text paragraph style then I search for my home made tags and replace them with nothing while applying the appropriate Paragraph style. If the document is short enough you can go through it and manually apply the heading, list, quotes, etc styles as needed.

Alternatively you could place the .docx (can MS Word 2019 save as .docx?) and find and replace the imported styles from Word with ones you have made in Publisher then delete the MS Word styles.

It really depends on the number of styles you have/want/need. You say you can format the text quickly in Word. Are you using unique Paragraph and Character styles/styling? or are you just overriding a couple of Paragraph styles?

[RickyO]

WORD 2019 provides for definable styles which allow for nearly all elements of the paragraphing, leading, kerning, text size/style/font.  And yes, WORD does save in .docx format; it is its native file type.

Thanks for the input; just seems your method is 'more' complicated than the two options I mentioned.

 

[Catshill]

I find it more reliable to do all my formatting in Affinity and only import Word files as plain text.

[Martyn Folkes]

Thanks to the OP for the question, and to Old Bruce and Catshill for answers, but how do you import Word .docx in plain text? Copy and Paste Without Format? Or is there a better way?

And how can you do it while retaining italics and bold text, which is very time consuming to find in the original document and then reformat, and could lead to errors? (I guess you use tags, but how is this done in practice?)

Thanks!

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, Martyn Folkes said:

Thanks to the OP for the question, and to Old Bruce and Catshill for answers, but how do you import Word .docx in plain text? Copy and Paste Without Format? Or is there a better way?

And how can you do it while retaining italics and bold text, which is very time consuming to find in the original document and then reformat, and could lead to errors? (I guess you use tags, but how is this done in practice?)

Thanks!

Plain text is unformatted. One font one size one weight , the file extension is .txt or (.text). Rich Text is text that is formatted with different fonts and sizes and weights, but no saved or applied "styles" the file extension is .rtf. Rich Text may work for you, it would be exported or Saved As... from MS Word. Then in Affinity Publisher you just search for the various sizes and fonts an apply the approprate Text Styles using the Find and Replace.

[Catshill]

7 hours ago, Martyn Folkes said:

Thanks to the OP for the question, and to Old Bruce and Catshill for answers, but how do you import Word .docx in plain text? Copy and Paste Without Format? Or is there a better way?

And how can you do it while retaining italics and bold text, which is very time consuming to find in the original document and then reformat, and could lead to errors? (I guess you use tags, but how is this done in practice?)

Thanks!

Yes copy and paste without format. And yes I manually apply bold and italic in APu. Importing styles (even just bold and italic)from Word was just too time consuming and I just prefer having a ‘clean’ base to work from.

[Martyn Folkes]

I am working with long documents (books containing mostly text). Plain text loses the local formatting (italic and bold) which is dangerous because it is difficult to find every instance of the local formatting in the original document and transfer that by hand to the APub document. There may be other styles applied that could be missed. Tags of some sort would need to be used in Word, and then Find and Replace, but what is the most practical way to do that? So I don't think plain text is the way to go for a longer document.

RTF imports all the styles from Word, including the italics and bold, so may as well Place the .docx file and bring in the Styles that way.

Based on my experiments, the "best" and quickest way is to apply separate styles to body text, headings, quotes, verse, etc., in MSWord, but keep it as clean as possible, with as few styles as possible. Then create a new document in APub, and Detach and Delete All Styles (using the option in the Text Styles panel menu). Then Place the Word document. Then adjust the Text Styles that are imported as desired, if necessary.

[RickyO]

Thanks to all of you.

I thought the answers that Catshll and Martyn provided to be the closest to what I was considering, and I really needed some confirmation.  As from decades of text work, I'm well aware that each application creator has a different take on how to deal with it.  (I started with MS Edlin, .... that should give you a hint.)

I was unaware of the 'Detach and Delete and Delete All Styles option in APub, and it's at the top of my list to investigate.

Knowing that every app works from a different perspective with text (older: WordPerfect, Publish, Adobe PageMaker, DisplayWriter, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_word_processors  ), my thinking is APub is no different, respectively; and it's simply better to import or place the text in the cleanest format, WORD saves it as plain text, and then just use APub to do its thing.  I have to believe that down the road, if I re-use the entire file as a template for any future project, odds are it will be a time-saver then as well as now.

Thanks again.