Publisher does not recognize WORD .docx files!

[Kansas 3]

+1

[Seneca 279]

Copying and pasting word files to HTML documents is a completely different kettle of fish and I agree with you on this count.

However, working with Word files in publishing is a different beast all together.

Trust me, I consider myself a veteran in this field and am well aware of problems working with Word. 

But it's completely unrealistic to expect people to save Word files down to .txt only and start working from there.

[kirknurse 15]

2 hours ago, ballardstudio said:

I am very serious. Carrying over attributes, especially from Microsoft, to any other application can cause issues with your files. I've seen it too many times and ask designers not to use imported or copy/paste text from MS Word. These issues also occur in digital design when copying text from Word and pasting it into an HTML document. In print, your provider may be charging you additional money for fixes in your files due to attributes and you wouldn't know because it's considered as a hidden production charge.

I second that, It is a big pain in the behind. Set up your native style sheets (in this case apub) and then bring in plain text is the way I have always done it. It can even be a pre-press nightmare as when you're pre-flighting and it's looking for a nonexistent font.

 

[osang 30]

+1

+11 for multiple file import of doc/docx files.

The nice thing is can copy/paste from Word to APub and the attributes/styles are still intact.

Edit: Well, I said too soon, some are not and it changed the regular fonts to bold.

[Stevde W 5]

Using P Plus X9 I have had very few problems importing Word docs. Just occasionally part of a document file may port in in Ariel or Times but once highlighted and correct font being used indicated it is fine. My main query not yet answered is HOW to create column guides for, say a 3 col A4 page publication.

[Fixx 447]

txt format usually get special characters all wrong when transferred to different computer. Word is much more reliable. It used to be normal to massage text in Word before importing it to layout application..

[fritz franz vogel 1]

it's not just a bit word-files, that i like to include in APu (copy&paste by small texts may be ok). but how about long texts, 200, 400 pages  (literature, scientific work with hundreds of foot or endnotes, with complex hierarchy in titling)? it would be really nice to have an automatic import instead of clicking and binding the text boxes again and again.

[ballardstudio 41]

16 hours ago, kirknurse said:

I second that, It is a big pain in the behind. Set up your native style sheets (in this case apub) and then bring in plain text is the way I have always done it. It can even be a pre-press nightmare as when you're pre-flighting and it's looking for a nonexistent font.

 

Thanks for backing me up on this one! A lot of designers don't understand the back end portion of this.

[ballardstudio 41]

44 minutes ago, fritz franz vogel said:

it's not just a bit word-files, that i like to include in APu (copy&paste by small texts may be ok). but how about long texts, 200, 400 pages  (literature, scientific work with hundreds of foot or endnotes, with complex hierarchy in titling)? it would be really nice to have an automatic import instead of clicking and binding the text boxes again and again.

It's a nightmare on the back end. What would be nice is to have Word files import as plain text with the ability to stylize copy on import.

[Stevde W 5]

200- 400 pages WOW - thankfully the largest publication I have to lay out is 64 pages. I originally used PageMaker way back in early 1990, then progressed to InDesign but when I became self employed and the version of InDesign I was using would not operate on Win 10, I switched to Page plus X8 then 9 which does more or less everything I need. But nobody has yet told me how to set up column guides in this new Affinity programme. No worries, I am off for a weeks holiday tomorrow, so computer shutting down.

[Gilescooperuk 6]

I can see the need to import plain text, but why would you need the mess of formatting that comes from word, all you need is the raw text, otherwise you may as well use word as the layout app.

word does do a good job at making readable long documents as I use it at work for documentation but not for page layout

[Stevde W 5]

Aha, that's the rub. Word is a word processor NOT a suitable lengthy paginated publication tool, especially when photos and diagrams have to be imported and text flowed around.

Still waiting for info re column guides in Affinity.

 

[kirknurse 15]

6 hours ago, ballardstudio said:

Thanks for backing me up on this one! A lot of designers don't understand the back end portion of this.

I am a designer but I was fortunate to work with a few prepress houses back in the early days before direct-to-press. You had to do separations to film and then burn plates. Film was not cheap so you HAD to get it correct almost from the very beginning.

 

[TonyB 1,462]

The ability to import .docx files is on our internal roadmap. Implementing .doc files is much, much harder so we can't commit to doing that work at the moment but we will continue to track its importance.

 

[Zero Zero 14]

On 9/4/2018 at 8:04 PM, ballardstudio said:

On 9/4/2018 at 5:40 PM, ballardstudio said:

Importing Word documents is bad practice when creating layouts. The carried over character attributes are known for causing various issues that can lead to a series of problems, including file corruption. You're better off creating a plain text document and reformatting it

Agreed. I've had no end of problems importing supplied formatted text into linked text frames across multiple pages. It should flow like water with no issues. It used to be a joy to work with copy supplied by pro journalists, there was never any problems and saved me hours of time when up against a deadline. So it's swings-and-roundabouts, both formatted and unformatted text have advantages according to the job in question. But searching through formatted text looking for those rogue hidden characters that screw-up the layout is a real pain that's for sure.

 

[countrycousin 1]

Just adding my voice to the lack of support for MS Word files in Publisher. One of the features I liked about Page Plus was the ability to drop Word files straight in and have it create new pages to catch the overflow. I always ask my clients to submit manuscripts in the default Word format. I then create the book layout, and save it as a PDF to send to the printer.

[Zero Zero 14]

Just as a brief follow up. I hate to say it but most people when they "lay-out" a word-processed document to look decent and "professional" do not even use the provided tools to do so. (I mean correct placement and use of Tabs, spaces, paragraph line indents and margins, paragraph spacing and the like.)

I've regularly received documents by other company personnel who have clearly spent hours laying them out to look decent to impress their boss. When I have received them and opened them I am shocked at the complete layout mess that is revealed. I then have to strip-out all their messed up formatting so I can do a decent job my end. Unfortunately I have often had to convert the whole job to simple text format just to start again from scratch -- yes it's been that bad!

Trained personnel who submit copy to publishing houses and design studios know about this and simply supply text without formatting except for paragraph returns. This makes it easy for them and easy for the designer to work very efficiently. Just flow it in and away you go.

Yes I agree that decent formatting of word-processed docs, can be helpful, but unfortunately there is a HUGE difference between professionally designed layouts and those done by most untrained personnel. That difference is called "Typography" which, let's be honest, is not a word we hear much about these days.

Clearly, I am a big supporter of Typography and will remain so, after all it's part of my job.

[Komatös 1]

On 8/31/2018 at 1:53 PM, Phil Martin said:

Can you tell me what formats, other than RTF, maybe PDF, can be used?

Windows has an "pdf-Printer".  You can covert Word documents in a batch. Set the PDF-Printer as the default printer. Then mark all documents you wish to convert. Click with the right mouse button at one of the marked files and chose "Print". All marked files will now be printed as pdf-files.

[cja17 9]

Hi all

I come from the “only bring plain text in" camp, with one exception - tables.

Indesign has a superb function to import word documents, but allowing you to remove styles and formatting, and crucially import the tables as “unformatted tables.”

This then gives you the basic structure, to apply paragraph/table styles and build up a styled document, without any of the junk formatting Word brings with it.

This was a MASSIVE step forward when introduced to Indesign (I think it was V2.0, almost 20 years ago!).

For those producing long, technical documents in Publisher, this should be a real roadmap priority.

Well done to Affinity for getting the Beta out – look forward to seeing it progress quickly.

Cheers, Christian

[ballardstudio 41]

On 9/5/2018 at 5:08 PM, kirknurse said:

I am a designer but I was fortunate to work with a few prepress houses back in the early days before direct-to-press. You had to do separations to film and then burn plates. Film was not cheap so you HAD to get it correct almost from the very beginning.

 

I remember those days. A lot has carried over since then. I was the designer who had to take the art and creative director's work and fix it all before it went to press. There are so many odd issues I've encountered, I just try to keep note as to what causes the problem and how to fix it; Word import is a big offender.

[dominik 406]

On 9/5/2018 at 4:03 PM, fritz franz vogel said:

it's not just a bit word-files, that i like to include in APu (copy&paste by small texts may be ok). but how about long texts, 200, 400 pages  (literature, scientific work with hundreds of foot or endnotes, with complex hierarchy in titling)? it would be really nice to have an automatic import instead of clicking and binding the text boxes again and again.

Hi @fritz franz vogel,

as mentioned before I was able to copy and paste almost 400 pages of text from a LibreOffice document with formatting and paragraph styles (for a start in APub). The original document included foot and endnotes but for obvious reasons they were not included because APub does not support these at the moment.

I'm not saying this is the perfect solution but for now it is a good start 

d.

 

[Daveuk 5]

A lot of my work involves using InDesign to typeset academic books (80,000 to 200,000 words). These are invariably created in MS Word (by international academic authors) then professionally copy-edited in MS-Word. Capturing character attributes (italic, superscript, bold etc.) from this source copy is ESSENTIAL (the idea of pasting plain text is ridiculous). In my usual workflow I already open DOCX files in Word and re-save as RTF; the DOCX format is unreliable when placing into InDesign. This is a long-winded way of saying that, for me, having only RTF as the source format for placing text is not a deal-breaker.

The lack of footnote/endnote support unfortunately is a deal-breaker for me and the AP beta is unusable for my post important projects.

[Dave Quail 56]

On 8/31/2018 at 11:34 AM, Phil Martin said:

I need to import .docx files and do not want to resave them as RTF. Briefly, please -- what file formats can be used for import or drag-and-drop?

This is really necessary. We would like to be able to import a couple of common file formats...

[ballardstudio 41]

On 9/5/2018 at 3:52 AM, Fixx said:

txt format usually get special characters all wrong when transferred to different computer. Word is much more reliable. It used to be normal to massage text in Word before importing it to layout application..

This is why Character Styles and Paragraph Styles were created. If an import is to be created, let it except Word files, but import the text as plain text so it doesn't ruin anything like TOC linking and other formatting within the document. This is crucial for long format documents especially manuals with images.

[Fixx 447]

3 minutes ago, ballardstudio said:

This is why Character Styles and Paragraph Styles were created. If an import is to be created, let it except Word files, but import the text as plain text so it doesn't ruin anything like TOC linking and other formatting within the document. This is crucial for long format documents especially manuals with images.

How would styles help if ÖÄÅØÜß are all wrong characters?