The manuscript – from Word to InDesign
Placing book manuscript – Word to InDesign.
Placing the book manuscript from Microsoft Word to InDesign. There are several ways to handle moving it from Microsoft Word to InDesign. Frankly, they can mean a lot of steps, but since we want a simple yet professional book, I suggest the easiest method below.
Easy — Book manuscript from Word to InDesign
Process: Having the fewest steps is just copying and pasting the text from the Microsoft Word manuscript into InDesign.
Simply go to File > Place. You can copy and place all at once in just one document or break it up into different the InDesign Chapter files. Go to File > New and select Book.
Result: When you place the file this way, the Microsoft formatting is lost. You will need to go through the manuscript and apply formatting to words and paragraphs, italics, footnotes, headers, and subheading typefaces, etc.
Be sure to first create Adobe InDesign Paragraph and Character Styles. Then format the text after placing it in InDesign. It is helpful to work with InDesign and the Word documents side-by-side on your monitor.
Synchronizing documents in a book
Changes are inevitable, so we frequently synchronize documents. Adobe InDesign made it easy to do synchronization globally. It would be great if each master, paragraph stylesheet, and all fonts that you choose in the beginning of the design process were the final choices. However, book design is a process, and sometimes we simply change our minds.
The synchronization of all documents in the book is a huge time saver. Avoid going into each chapter to make changes.
We’re assuming that you already have the InDesign book and it has several documents. They may be front matter, chapter 1, chapter 2, back matter, or similar names for those documents. Frequently save chapters. Save the book with a right click on the three horizontal lines and select “Save”.
How to synchronize documents
See the example in the feature image on this post.
- With the book open and documents already in the book, click on the three horizontal lines in the upper right corner and select Synchronize. Options . . .
- Make sure that Other and Styles and Swatches have a check, and all of the items in each of these two groups also have a check. This need only be verified once.
Please refer again to the example in the feature post image.
- See the style source icon that is circled and next to “BD 00 Front Matter.” Let’s say that we are changing or adding a Paragraph Style, Character Style or even a Master page in this first document. We want to synchronize the rest of the documents in the book so the styles match.
- Press Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) and click the rest of the documents. Leave the “BD 00 Front Matter” document alone because it is the source document in this case.
- Again, click on the three horizontal lines in the upper right corner and select Synchronize Book.
- All Other and Styles and Swatches styles from “BD 00 Front Matter” are synced to the rest of the chapters. The style source icon can be placed next to other chapters that you want to synchronize.
- For instance, if you are working in “BD 07 Extras” and realize that you want to change the color of a Paragraph Style, simply change the color of the style in that document only.
- Click the empty box to the left of “BD 07 Extras” and the style source icon will appear there. It becomes the source document. Now, click all the other documents and synchronize.
Note: You might want to change, for example, all the footer placements in all of the chapter Parents (Masters.) Select any chapter, like Chapter 3 for example, and place the style source icon there. Simply change all the Parents in Chapter 3 and then synchronize all other documents in the book to Chapter 3.
