InDesign

Place (import) text

When you place a text or spreadsheet file, you can specify options to determine how the imported text is formatted.

For a video on importing content into InDesign, see www.adobe.com/go/vid0067.

  1. (Optional) To create links in placed files, click Type in the Preferences dialog box and select Create Links When Placing Text And Spreadsheet Files.

    Selecting this option creates a link to the placed file. You can use the Links panel to update, relink, or remove links to text files. However, if you format linked text in InDesign, the formatting may not be preserved when you update the link. If this option isn’t selected, imported text and spreadsheet files are embedded (not linked).

  2. Do one of the following:

    • To create a new frame for the placed text, make sure that no insertion point is present and that no text or frames are selected.

    • To add text to a frame, use the Type tool  to select text or place the insertion point.

    • To replace the contents of an existing frame, use a selection tool to select the frame. If the frame is threaded, a loaded text cursor appears.

      If you accidentally replace a text file or graphic using this method, choose Edit > Undo Replace, and then click or drag to create a text frame.
  3. Choose File > Place.
  4. Select Replace Selected Item if you want the imported file to replace the contents of a selected frame, to replace selected text, or to be added to the text frame at the insertion point. Deselect this option to flow the imported file into a new frame.
  5. Select Show Import Options, and then double-click the file you want to import.
  6. Set import options, and then click OK.

If you haven’t already designated an existing frame to receive text, the pointer becomes a loaded text icon, ready to flow text wherever you click or drag.

If you receive an alert that the requested filter wasn’t found, you may be trying to place a file from a different word-processing application or from an earlier version of Microsoft® Word, such as Word 6. Open the file in its original application and save it as RTF, which preserves most formatting.

If the imported Microsoft Excel document displays red dots in cells, adjust cell size or text attributes so that overset content becomes visible. You can also place the file as unformatted tabbed text, and then convert the tabbed text to a table.

Microsoft Word and RTF import options

If you select Show Import Options when placing a Word file or an RTF file, you can choose from these options:

Table Of Contents Text
Imports the table of contents as part of the text in the story. These entries are imported as text only.

Index Text
Imports the index as part of the text in the story. These entries are imported as text only.

Footnotes
Imports Word footnotes. Footnotes and references are preserved, but renumbered based on the document’s footnote settings.

Endnotes
Imports endnotes as part of the text at the end of the story.

Use Typographer’s Quotes
Ensures that imported text includes left and right quotation marks (“ ”) and apostrophes (’) instead of straight quotation marks (" ") and apostrophes (').

Remove Styles And Formatting From Text And Tables
Removes formatting, such as typeface, type color, and type style, from the imported text, including text in tables. Paragraph styles and inline graphics aren’t imported if this option is selected.

Preserve Local Overrides
When you choose to remove styles and formatting from text and tables, you can select Preserve Local Overrides to maintain character formatting, such as bold and italics, that is applied to part of a paragraph. Deselect this option to remove all formatting.

Convert Tables To
When you choose to remove styles and formatting from text and tables, you can convert tables to either basic, unformatted tables or unformatted, tab-delimited text.

If you want to import unformatted text and formatted tables, import the text without formatting, and then paste the tables from Word into InDesign.

Preserve Styles And Formatting From Text And Tables
Preserves the Word document’s formatting in the InDesign or InCopy document. You can use the other options in the Formatting section to determine how styles and formatting are preserved.

Manual Page Breaks
Determines how page breaks from the Word file are formatted in InDesign or InCopy. Select Preserve Page Breaks to use the same page breaks used in Word, or select Convert To Column Breaks or No Breaks.

Import Inline Graphics
Preserves inline graphics from the Word document in InDesign.

Import Unused Styles
Imports all styles from the Word document, even if the styles aren’t applied to text.

Convert Bullets & Numbers To Text
Imports bullets and numbers as actual characters, preserving the look of the paragraph. However, in numbered lists, the numbers are not automatically updated when the list items are changed.

Track Changes
Selecting this option causes highlighting and strikeout to appear when you edit the imported text in InCopy while Track Changes is turned on; deselecting this option causes all the imported text to be highlighted as a single addition. Track Changes can be viewed in InCopy, not InDesign.

Import Styles Automatically
Imports styles from the Word document into the InDesign or InCopy document. If a yellow warning triangle appears next to Style Name Conflicts, then one or more paragraph or character style from the Word document has the same name as an InDesign style.

To determine how these style name conflicts are resolved, select an option from the Paragraph Style Conflicts and Character Style Conflicts menu. Choosing Use InDesign Style Definition causes the imported style text to be formatted based on the InDesign style. Choosing Redefine InDesign Style causes the imported style text to be formatted based on the Word style, and changes existing InDesign text formatted with that style. Choosing Auto Rename causes the imported Word styles to be renamed. For example, if InDesign and Word have a Subheading style, the imported Word style is renamed Subheading_wrd_1 when Auto Rename is selected.

Note: InDesign converts paragraph and character styles but not list styles.

Customize Style Import
Lets you use the Style Mapping dialog box to select which InDesign style should be used for each Word style in the imported document.

Save Preset
Stores the current Word Import Options for later reuse. Specify the import options, click Save Preset, type the name of the preset, and click OK. The next time you import a Word style, you can select the preset you created from the Preset menu. Click Set As Default if you want the selected preset to be used as the default for future imports of Word documents.

Text-file import options

If you select Show Import Options when placing a text file, you can choose from these options:

Character Set
Specifies the computer language character set, such as ANSI, Unicode, or Windows CE, that was used to create the text file. The default selection is the character set that corresponds to the default language of InDesign or InCopy.

Platform
Specifies whether the file was created in Windows or Mac OS.

Set Dictionary To
Specifies the dictionary to be used by the imported text.

Extra Carriage Returns
Specifies how extra paragraph returns are imported. Choose Remove At End Of Every Line or Remove Between Paragraphs.

Replace
Replaces the specified number of spaces with a tab.

Use Typographer’s Quotes
Ensures that imported text includes left and right quotation marks (“ ”) and apostrophes (’) instead of straight quotation marks (" ") and apostrophes (').

Microsoft Excel import options

You can choose from these options when importing an Excel file:

Sheet
Specifies the worksheet you want to import.

View
Specifies whether to import any stored custom or personal views, or to ignore the views.

Cell Range
Specifies the range of cells, using a colon (:) to designate the range (such as A1:G15). If there are named ranges within the worksheet, these names appear in the Cell Range menu.

Import Hidden Cells Not Saved in View
Includes any cells formatted as hidden cells in the Excel spreadsheet.

Table
Specifies how the spreadsheet information appears in the document.
Formatted Table
InDesign tries to preserve the same formatting used in Excel, although the formatting of text within each cell may not be preserved. If the spreadsheet is linked rather than embedded, updating the link will override any formatting applied to the table in InDesign.

Unformatted Table
The table is imported without any formatting from the spreadsheet, and InDesign formatting is used even if you update a linked table. When this option is selected, you can apply a table style to the imported table.

Unformatted Tabbed Text
The table is imported as tab-delimited text, which you can then convert to a table in InDesign or InCopy.

Formatted Only Once
InDesign preserves the same formatting used in Excel during the initial import. Whenever you update the link to the table, any formatting changes made to the spreadsheet are ignored in the linked table. This option isn’t available in InCopy.

Table Style
Applies the table style you specify to the imported document. This option is available only if Unformatted Table is selected.

Cell Alignment
Specifies the cell alignment for the imported document.

Include Inline Graphics
Preserves inline graphics from the Excel document in InDesign.

Number Of Decimal Places To Include
Specifies the number of decimal places of spreadsheet figures.

Use Typographer’s Quotes
Ensures that imported text includes left and right quotation marks (“ ”) and apostrophes (’) instead of straight quotation marks (" ") and apostrophes (').

Tagged-text import options

You can import (or export) a text file capable of taking advantage of InDesign’s formatting capabilities by using the tagged text format. Tagged-text files are text files containing information describing the formatting you want InDesign to apply. Properly tagged text can describe almost anything that can appear in an InDesign story, including all paragraph-level attributes, character-level attributes, and special characters.

For information on specifying tags, see the Tagged Text PDF document on the InDesign CS3 DVD.

The following options are available when you import a tagged-text file and select Show Import Options in the Place dialog box.

Use Typographer’s Quotes
Ensures that imported text includes left and right quotation marks (“ ”) and apostrophes (’) instead of straight quotation marks (" ") and apostrophes (').

Remove Text Formatting
Removes formatting, such as typeface, type color, and type style, from the imported text.

Resolve Text Style Conflicts Using
Specifies which character or paragraph style to apply when there is a conflict between the style in the tagged-text file and the style in the InDesign document. Select Publication Definition to use the definition that already exists for that style in the InDesign document. Select Tagged File Definition to use the style as defined in the tagged text. This option creates another style name, with “copy” appended to it in the Style panel.

Show List Of Problem Tags Before Place
Displays a list of unrecognized tags. If a list appears, you can choose to cancel or continue the import. If you continue, the file may not look as expected.

Save Word or RTF import options as presets

  1. When placing a Word or RTF file, make sure that Show Import Options is selected, and choose Open.
  2. In the Import Options dialog box, specify the desired settings.
  3. Click Save Preset, type a preset name, and click OK.
  4. (Optional) Click Set As Default to use the preset each time you import a file of that file type.

You can then select custom presets from the Preset menu in the Import Options dialog box whenever you open a Word or RTF file.