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[Implemented] Publisher does not recognize WORD .docx files!


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A problem that I'm facing is when I copy and paste a sum of text from word into APu, and change it to a custom "Body" style, all the italics changes to normal fonts, and I don't want to have to go through a 320 page document, looking for all the places where there needs to be italics...

Is there any way to change the format into another style without italics or bold sections being changed?

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A problem that I'm facing is when I copy and paste a sum of text from word into APu, and change it to a custom "Body" style, all the italics changes to normal fonts, and I don't want to have to go through a 320 page document, looking for all the places where there needs to be italics...

Is there any way to change the format into another style without italics or bold sections being changed?

The best way is to replace the italics and bold with character styles. You should be able to do that with Find and Replace. Applying a paragraph style will leave character styles, and their formatting, alone. (Make sure you have the latest beta, because there was a bug in this area.)

Another way is from the Text Styles panel, right-click on a style and Apply "Style" and Preserve Character Formatting. However, that will keep all character formatting, including pointsize etc.

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+1 for Publisher to become able to import DOC/DOCX/RTF file content.
It will be very useful for those who do Book Editing and Publishing using APub.

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Some while ago I started to use Pageplus in preference to WORD in the sure and certain expectation that, when APu came along, the one file format it would be able to import would be PPP. PLEASE asap for all of the formats requested in this thread. I like what I'm seeing in APu, and it seems to do an awful lot of really clever things really well - but at the expense of the basic stuff.

Speaking of which - how do I reset the default [No Style] style which populates the opening text boxes? I know, I need to put that query somewhere else, but this seems to be the right population of readers!

 

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On 9/27/2018 at 5:13 AM, Stevekelly said:

I’m a Mac user, so never used pageplus.  being doing this for over 20 years now and am fully willing to support affinity. I started off on quark, and then adobe came along and promised to provide a better cheaper solution. Which they did with indesign for a while. Now they basically steal my money on a monthly basis and provide me with  a hideous bloated, bug ridden expensive monster. Affinity can have all the input they want from me if it helps us designers out and ends the Adobe monopoly. Yes .doc import is simply a must.  I’m fully behind you Affinity!

Was waiting for some of the Quark users to chime in...I use both BUT when I started using Quark--unlike most of the experienced designers on this board--I was ALREADY knee-deep in InDesign. Was working for a corporate client who was a government contractor and refused to take anything we were doing unless it was in Quark for the Mac. No big deal...we were already on Macs, but we were using PM at first and, later, ID. Point is, I remember the first time painfully importing a Word document into Quark...and it would always drop the last line of text. Finally found out that the way to defeat this was to convert the document to either rtf (which didn't work all of the time) or .txt (which did work all of the time). Later found out that Quark did this under the guise of best practices because of all of the extra garbage in the Word files. I know it's not ideal but, unless there's a control in the import to strip/convert the Word styles and whatever else is in there, I've found over time that it is indeed better to strip out the garbage from the beginning and start fresh. Now, there ARE/WILL BE jobs wherein it will be preferable to import the Word document as is. This is something that should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, IMHO. 

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43 minutes ago, Quarian said:

I've found over time that it is indeed better to strip out the garbage from the beginning and start fresh.

You and me both. 

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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On 10/9/2018 at 11:25 AM, Quarian said:

Was waiting for some of the Quark users to chime in...I use both BUT when I started using Quark--unlike most of the experienced designers on this board--I was ALREADY knee-deep in InDesign. Was working for a corporate client who was a government contractor and refused to take anything we were doing unless it was in Quark for the Mac. No big deal...we were already on Macs, but we were using PM at first and, later, ID. Point is, I remember the first time painfully importing a Word document into Quark...and it would always drop the last line of text. Finally found out that the way to defeat this was to convert the document to either rtf (which didn't work all of the time) or .txt (which did work all of the time). Later found out that Quark did this under the guise of best practices because of all of the extra garbage in the Word files. I know it's not ideal but, unless there's a control in the import to strip/convert the Word styles and whatever else is in there, I've found over time that it is indeed better to strip out the garbage from the beginning and start fresh. Now, there ARE/WILL BE jobs wherein it will be preferable to import the Word document as is. This is something that should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, IMHO. 

Well, I'm a Quark 2017 user and and I'm happy to chime in! I've used Quark for my full-time graphic design business for over 30 years, since QXP 3. I started with QXP long before Id existed. At the university, the dept. supplies CC to the students so that's what they use and what I teach/help them with and demo with. So, I know both. Both Id and QXP have some good features and some less-well implemented "features" but, on the whole, I much prefer to use QXP and do, for all my professional work. I'm also a Freehand refugee. It was a dark day when Adobe bought Macromedia stuck us with the clunky, buggy and vastly inferior Ai. Don't get me started about that! That equation is far less balanced than Id/QXP tradeoffs. 

I've never really had any issues, in QXP, with imported Wd files. Of course, Wd is terrible software to begin with and add to that clients don't know how to use it "properly" This results in terrible, junky files which require fixing. So, I agree that, in most cases, it's easier and better to strip Wd formatting and rebuild it in QXP. 

Since QXP 2016, QXP has been able to convert items from Illustrator, inDesign, Acrobat, PowerPoint, Excel, WMf and EPS files to native QXP objects. My experience with this feature has been great but some have reported some issues. For me, layouts have opened in QXP—as a completely editable QXP doc—that is identical to the Ai or Id source file. This feature does not yet work with multipage, linked documents. It's one page/one spread at a time.Bummer. But I would guess that that capability is coming. Earlier this year, Quark released a stable public beta of an IDML import/convert-to-editable-QXP-document feature.

Adobe software is buggy, clunky and bloated and I'm not interested in being financially extorted by Adobe. A monopoly in a market is not conducive to innovation. So, I'm excited about the prospect of an alternative suite of professional design tools.

But, the ability of AfP (is that the correct acronym?) to import QXP, Ai and Id files is an absolute requirement for me if I am to switch to Af. Exporting in native format is not as critical for me as all of my printers want PDF files for printing.

lettergothic

 

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The Open Document Format (ODF) used by OpenOffice/LibreOffice is well ... open.

Word can save documents to the ODF text file ODT format.

How about supporting LibreOffice Writer ODT import?

I would assume it is much easier program to import an open and well documented format.

It is quite annoying to have to save a LibreOffice ODT text document to DOCX format to import into InDesign.

Plus it would provide encouragement to use an open format.

Would also encourage use of FOSS and reasonably priced software over entrenched monopolies and extortionate prices.

 

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  • 2 months later...
17 minutes ago, chakko007 said:

Just wondering, but... what would by typical use cases of importing a docx document into a desktop publishing software?

Whether I get smallish paragraphs for a brochure or a book, I am often sent Word files. That would be a reason. 

.docx is Word's native file format, it saves a step for those who want to import .docx directly.

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1 hour ago, chakko007 said:

Sure, but, isn't copying and pasting the text unformatted the way to go? Otherwise you'd mess up the existing formatting of the file or not?

If you want all the dross that can accompany a common Word file, copy/pasting might work for you. While the Word files I get from publishers adhere to using paragraph and character styles pretty good, even those need cleaning up before I import them using other layout applications. But the same would apply to APub.

Word files from independent authors can range from reasonable to abysmal in the proper use of text styles. I always need to run through them and clean them up.

In short, I never copy/paste anything in its entirety. I may copy small snippets, paste into a text editor, then copy/paste that, though.

Mike

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Oh. And my working method is the use of tagged text, whether out of Word or whatever. It's purely clean, but with paragraph and character styles properly applied upon import. Something APub cannot do.

Importing a clean RTF or DOCX can save one a lot of time. What APub lacks in this department is the ability to map styles upon import. Tagged text is more "pure."

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7 hours ago, chakko007 said:

Sure, but, isn't copying and pasting the text unformatted the way to go? Otherwise you'd mess up the existing formatting of the file or not?

We usually want some local formatting to come through. Italics, bolds, super/subscripts etc. 

Personally I feel importing docx is possible to do very reliably. TXT files usually have problems with encoding. And yes, all docx files need cleaning up before importing.

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14 hours ago, chakko007 said:

Just wondering, but... what would by typical use cases of importing a docx document into a desktop publishing software?

Word is the standard format for manuscript of long documents. Almost every book in the book store was written and/or edited in Word, then output with InDesign or QuarkXPress. RTF support is a lot better than nothing, but the lack of support for placing Word docs would be a dealbreaker for many folks involved in long doc production. It'd be great if APub could add this soon, along with other long doc essentials like footnotes.

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Regarding use cases ...

This is very helpful for many different uses:

  • Business users compiling a monthly report from many different depts/locations
  • Newsletters collecting articles from many different authors
  • Books with different chapters being written and/or edited by different people
  • Etc., etc., etc ...

Word has the ability to restrict which styles may be used in a document.
So when you have multiple contributors you set them up with a document template.
That along with a little instruction can make it easy to import multiple Word docs with little fixing required.
Because styles allowed in the Word doc correspond directly with the target publication (in InDesign) the text is imported with no need for any mapping of styles.
Have not tried this yet with APub.

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On 1/15/2019 at 9:53 AM, Fixx said:

And yes, all docx files need cleaning up before importing.

What do you mean, "cleaning up"?
 

23 hours ago, Cal said:

It'd be great if APub could add this soon, along with other long doc essentials like footnotes.

And not to forget: The two different import variants for text (text menu) and images (file menu) should merge into one - "Place".

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For me, doc/docx import is a big deal breaker for me. I require that the text, inline images and tables are imported accurately and without modification to paragraph formatting. I currently saved my document out as Rich Text Format and imported them. All tables were dropped and no in-line images were visible.

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Usually these epub converters have trouble with page breaks in PDFs and cannot produce clean reflowable ebooks. I had to edit the text content to remove page numbers and page breaks and tweak the css last time I tried.

Maybe this version works better now?

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