Word to Frame

[Jennifer Randel]

Hi all,
Wouldn't it be just as easy to use Silicon Prairie Software's Paragraph Tools as it is to create that macro?

~Jennifer

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Fred Ridder
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 12:20 PM
To: Mike Feimster; Flato, Gillian; Framers List
Subject: RE: Word to Frame


Responding to Gillian Flato, Mike Feimster wrote:
> What I've done in the past is use word macros to make the para styles
> in Word match the Frame styles, then import the word docs into Frame.


That's exactly the same approach I used in converting ~10k pages of Word docs (>50 docs) into FrameMaker at a previous employer.

Just to amplify on a few points, though:

You really want to use File>Import>File (Copy Into Document) to pull the Word content into a pre-formatted FrameMaker template rather than directly opening the Word file from the FrameMaker File menu. Besides the fact that the import filter somehow seems more robust in that mode, you also have the opportunity to leave behind most of Word-specific formatting junk by choosing the "Reformat Using Current Document's Formatting" option in the Import Text Flow by Copy dialog.

In the same macro that you use to rename the Word paragraph styles, you should also redefine any styles that use bullets or numbering to remove them. If bullets or autonumbers are present in the Word file, FrameMaker does its best to preserve them and you'll get garbage characters in the converted file.

Other useful operations in prepping the Word file are to remove any TOC, LOT, LOF, and index (since FrameMaker handles them completely differently), strip any headers and footers (these will be defined in your FrameMaker template) and remove any section breaks (meaningless in Frame). In my own process, I also removed all graphics from the Word file because they really slowed the conversion down and I knew we were going to replace the pasted-in images with anchored frames and referenced graphics post-conversion.

-Fred Ridder
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