I am working on a book with quite a lengthy page and with frequent italics word or phrases. The book text source is a Microsoft Word .DOCX format.
To bring them into InDesign, there are two different ways to do it. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages.
- First way, you can just do copy paste texts from Word to InDesign. The advantage is, you are free from text styles clutters that is brought from Word formatting. Perhaps this is perfect method for texts or copy that has minimal formatting such as italic words, bullets, numbering, custom tabs, custom alignment, sections etc. For short texts yet open to layout customization, I think I like this method. But if the original text has various formatting, this is a nightmare.
- So the second way, is by importing the DOCX file into InDesign. You can just drop the DOCX file into inDesign and the InDesign will just flow the texts and all of its formating into the page. However, life isn't made that easy though. Custom formatting originated from the Word may goes wild into InDesign. Especially for anchored images, table, bullets, footnotes, etc. Some difference in font size and document size from Word to InDesign will also cause some chaos. To minimize the craziness, it is always better to format it according to the final output in Word first. If you are going to produce your book in font size of 12pt, 2 cm margins, A5 size page, for example, set it up in Word first before proceed importing it into InDesign.
I mostly liked the second option. Maybe because I frequently work with long documents that have various formatting from the original DOCX file. It is painful to recheck all the formatting change if I use the first method if I have hundreds of pages. Even though proofing is important, for me, it is not a fun job to do and should be done by the writer, not the designer.
The second option also has its own problem. That is, the continuous flow of texts across the whole pages. So if I adjust the layout of Chapter 1, the rest chapters would be affected. The page number will also affected. Any significant change that happen in the early to mid pages, would affect the rest of pages. A long day in the office indeed. Ironically, InDesign does not have any helpful features to solve this problem.
Thankfully, there's always nice people in this world who made life still easier at some point. Like this problem, there's a script for it. It is called as Break Text Thread. You can get the free script here. A real hero for book layout designers.
With this script, you can now separate text boxes from a page to another page with ease. I can now separate the text link from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2 to Chapter 3, easily. Whenever I edited the Chapter 1, texts in Chapter 2 are still intact. Which is awesome. Sure, I have to disconnect text boxes manually, but that is enough, better than none solution from Adobe.
0 Comments