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NewDay · 11-15-2010, 02:53 PM

The follow-up story: Subsequent attempts to c/p from Word 11 into CS5 resulted in repeated crashes. So to eliminate c/p as the problem, I split the Word doc into parts, then did a Place of each part, which worked fine for parts one and three, but part two showed only a partial placement. After a couple of rounds of this, I finally noticed that it was balking at the same spot.

So I opened the Word part that wouldn't completely place, and examined the spot where it was hanging up in CS5. Seems the author had tried to do some fancy formatting without understanding the Style function; he had applied his formatting locally, so it looked OK visually, but digitally it was a mess, and that's what CS5 was objecting to.

I overrode his local formatting, conformed the Style back to Normal, and it placed just fine in InDesign.

So book designers, beware of authors who present Word docs that try to emulate the look of a finished book. Unless they really, truly know what they're doing with Styles, it can cause you grief electronically. From now on, I'm going to begin every author's ms with a Select All and conform everything to Normal. Then as I apply Styles in InDesign, I'll know they're digitally clean.

(Interestingly, on two separate occasions I submitted crash reports on this to Adobe and to Apple. Absolutely no feedback from either end.)

11-15-2010, 02:53 PM	#2
NewDay Connoisseur Posts: 59 Karma: 100 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Northern California, in the redwoods by the ocean Device: iPad	The follow-up story: Subsequent attempts to c/p from Word 11 into CS5 resulted in repeated crashes. So to eliminate c/p as the problem, I split the Word doc into parts, then did a Place of each part, which worked fine for parts one and three, but part two showed only a partial placement. After a couple of rounds of this, I finally noticed that it was balking at the same spot. So I opened the Word part that wouldn't completely place, and examined the spot where it was hanging up in CS5. Seems the author had tried to do some fancy formatting without understanding the Style function; he had applied his formatting locally, so it looked OK visually, but digitally it was a mess, and that's what CS5 was objecting to. I overrode his local formatting, conformed the Style back to Normal, and it placed just fine in InDesign. So book designers, beware of authors who present Word docs that try to emulate the look of a finished book. Unless they really, truly know what they're doing with Styles, it can cause you grief electronically. From now on, I'm going to begin every author's ms with a Select All and conform everything to Normal. Then as I apply Styles in InDesign, I'll know they're digitally clean. (Interestingly, on two separate occasions I submitted crash reports on this to Adobe and to Apple. Absolutely no feedback from either end.)