newbie needs help - DOCX to EPUB

[highmeadow]

Hey there. I’m new to this forum and to Calibre. I have a 61,000 word manuscript that was written on msword 2021, docx. I successfully converted it to a .pdf and an .htm file, using other software. But when I used Calibre to convert the docx file to .epub I got some pages overlayed in black and some overlayed in white with underlines. There is nothing like that visible in the original word document. I tried uploading the .html version of the document to Calibre for conversion to .epub with better success but still three pages came out black and one came out white underlined. And all my dropcaps were misplaced. I tried messing around with the heuristic generator, but couldn’t fix the problems. I would be thankful for any suggestions on how I address these problems. Excuse me if this thread already exists.

[BetterRed]

See How to ask a question about conversion problems

BR

[Quoth]

Your MS Word document isn't using Paragraph styles properly, or it's not a standard kind of docx.

Note you can't use the same MS Word document for PDF and epub. The copy for epub should have:

1. Only one page style.
2. A heading style with automatic page break where you want page breaks.
3. No headers or footers or page numbers
4. No Floats, all images anchored as characters.
5. Only "direct formatting", for at most, bold/strong, italic/emp, superscript and subscript.
6. Avoid drop caps. While they can work, often they don't.
7. No drop caps as images.
8. Named styles for all headings and paragraphs.
9. Lists only by paragraph style and direct entry of numbers etc that looks like a list format.
10. Only use fonts with free distribution and not too many.
11. Only black text and plain paper (no backgrounds)
12. Images can be colour but must be embedded. Replace transparency with white. Note that they will work in colour on apps but actual ereaders only have black, white and 14 greys.

We do the epub first and proof it on an ereader. Then a copy is made of the final wordprocessor source and it's then edited for PDF by adding page styles for front matter, contents, chapter first page, left page, right page, end matter, with suitable variations of page headers, footers and numbers.

Doing it for ten years, MS Word and now LO Writer.

[JSWolf]

And once the Word document is converted to ePub, load the ePub into the Calibre editor and have a go at any sort of cleanup that would make the formatting better.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And once the Word document is converted to ePub, load the ePub into the Calibre editor and have a go at any sort of cleanup that would make the formatting better.

Though if WP styles are done properly only the width & height of some image CSS need changed. One to a percent and other to auto.

Never need to change anything else on a LO Writer odt file also Save As docx. Calibre can read odt, but docx works better.

[BookCat]

I've successfully converted Word documents in the past by first saving them as RTF files, then importing them to Calibre for conversion to epub.

If you want to save the docx version, create two copies of the file, keep one in the original format, use the other to convert.