Copying Word text to FM unstructured 12.

[Harding, Dan]

My workflow from Word to FM doesn't use plain text, as I don't want to have to manually recreate footnotes (our content is footnote-heavy) or re-apply bold or italics within paragraphs. By the same token, I want to get rid of all of the Word-defined styles.

(There likely is a more elegant way to do this via MIF2GO, but I have not had time to investigate this yet, so I'm still doing it old-school.)

This doesn't get rid of 100% of the Word-inflicted anomalies, but I would posit that it gets rid of 90%+, while still retaining the above attributes.


1.       Save a copy of your Word file that has embedded graphics deleted (You'll want to re-place them in FM anyway). Depending on whether you are importing Word index markers or have round-tripped from FM to Word to FM, you'll want to experiment with backsaving .docx (Word 2010 & 2013) files to .doc (Word 2003 & 2007) format, as sometimes index markers fall by the wayside.

2.       Open a blank version of your FM template file.

3.       Import Word file into document (not by reference).

4.       Select all.

5.       Apply your default paragraph text style to entire document. This removes any Word-based paragraph styles from the majority of the text while retaining inline bold and italics.

6.       Wash via MIF.

7.       Global search <space><space> to <space>. Repeat until none are found. This will remove consecutive spaces.

8.       Global search <space>\p to \p. This removes any trailing spaces at the end of paragraphs.

9.       Global search \p<space> to \p. This removes any leading spaces at the beginning of paragraphs.

10.   Global search \p\p to \p. This removes consecutive blank lines. Repeat until none are found.

There will still be tidying to be done and re-application of non-text paragraph styles, but it's a good starting point.

Note: I don't know how tables import from Word to FM, as I use LaTeX to set all my tables and treat them as imported graphics in FM.


Dan Harding
Technical Editorial Specialist
University of Illinois Tax School
419 Mumford Hall
1301 West Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801
217-333-0935

From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Syed Zaeem Hosain (Syed.Hosain at aeris.net)
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2014 6:51 PM
To: Winberg, Harold; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: Copying Word text to FM unstructured 12.

What I like to do is save the Word file as "Plain Text" from Word 2013 ... this is one of the options within Word to output file formats.

This makes every paragraph in the Word document stay as a single line in the text file.

When I read this text file into FrameMaker, the single line converts automatically into a single paragraph again.

One other thing I do is turn hyphenation off inside Word - this avoid dash character inserts inside the words.

Finally, saving this way helps my em-dashs, smart-quotes, etc., also stay properly output into the text files (have to use the "Windows default" option when saving as text).

Much simpler to do this rather than having to do tons of post-edits to fix all the "special" characters.

Z

From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com> [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Winberg, Harold
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2014 10:25 AM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com<mailto:framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Subject: Copying Word text to FM unstructured 12.

Do I have to anything special when copying and pasting word into FM 12. I understand it should be plain text or it can retain a lot of Word garbage.

Does FM 12 take care of this or do I need to save or paste it as plain text??

Thanks
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