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Old 05-29-2011, 01:54 AM   #1
videopope
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Losing Indents and Paragraph spacing

So I have been reading this site for awhile and been searching the net for a long time looking for a solution to this problem. So far I have been out of luck.

The problem is that when I try to create the epub document, everything converts, but I lose almost every indent, line break or page break.

The file was originally created in Word. I have tried importing that word file using the Kindle convert over email tool and the mobi that is created is as I describe above.

So I imported the file into Indesign and created my layout and the imported from Indesign to epub. Same exact problem.

I took the file and converted it to RTF, and then used Calibre to convert it to epub AND mobi. Same problem.

I saved the word file as a PDF - perfect formatting - then used Calibre to convert the PDF into epub and mobi. Same problem.

I understand that I can create the epub manually using HTML, but I don't know html, and excuse the laziness, I have no desire to learn it. I am thinking that if I create the epub manually, I could correct these problems, but like I said, i have no desire to learn html. Is there no tool out there that can do the heavy lifting for me? Is there a problem with my source file? What should I look for?

I would prefer not to upload the source file here for copyright reasons.

Please help!
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Old 05-29-2011, 03:01 AM   #2
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Hi

Your "same problem" stance, makes me think about this story.

One guy complained of headache after drinking Gin and Coca-Cola.
Same problem after Whisky and Coca-Cola.
Same problem after Vodka and Coca-Cola.
He, very logically, decided to stop Coca-Cola.

To comment seriously, I would say that Word, though it's probably the best "classical" text processing application, is probably not the best tool if your final aim is to produce EPUBs.
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Old 05-29-2011, 03:42 AM   #3
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Originally Posted by videopope View Post
I understand that I can create the epub manually using HTML, but I don't know html, and excuse the laziness, I have no desire to learn it.
No problem, you can live a happy life without knowing HTML... but I'm afraid it's going to be tough if you want to create and style ebooks with no knowledge of HTML and CSS.

Quote:
I would prefer not to upload the source file here for copyright reasons.
If you replace the text with some other placeholder text there will be no problem.

But you better go step by step. Convert your file to HTML and open it in a browser. Does it look fine? The problem lies in later steps. Is it wrong? Something's rotten inside Word.
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Old 05-29-2011, 05:18 AM   #4
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You can use Word without a problem. You just have to remember to save as filtered HTML and clean the stuff up. Unfortunatly that requires some knowledge about HTML/CSS...
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Old 05-29-2011, 08:20 AM   #5
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You can convert MS Word documents to EPUB with Atlantis Word Processor.
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Old 05-29-2011, 09:36 AM   #6
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If this is a requirement for you, without tinkering with any html code, you can use freely LibreOffice or OpenOffice.org with the extension writer2xhtml to produce an EPUB.

You'll have to use styles throughout. Any reasonable feature of EPUB can be easily added, including tables, floating images, ordered lists, endnotes and more... Once produced, you can check, if you wish, its validity with Sigil.

Ask information about these points above, because very few programs can provide them to you directly (I mean without adding manually some kind of code).

Just use my signature. (it's in French)

Last edited by roger64; 05-29-2011 at 10:07 AM.
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Old 06-01-2011, 10:16 PM   #7
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You can convert MS Word documents to EPUB with Atlantis Word Processor.
How clean would the code inside the ePub be doing it this way?
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Old 06-02-2011, 03:48 AM   #8
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It's okay. You still need to clean up. The free tool from Apose also does a relative good job.
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Old 06-03-2011, 03:46 AM   #9
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How clean would the code inside the ePub be doing it this way?
Very clean.
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Old 06-03-2011, 06:43 PM   #10
videopope
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Solved it!

Turns out that I had made the mistake of indenting all the paragraphs in the document with TAB characters. For some reason, when I converted the document, neither the .epub or .mobi formats recognized it, or recognized it has paragraph breaks.

The correct way to do it was to simply set the first line indent at .5 inches in the margins settings and it was all good.

All you guys probably already knew this, so I feel a little videopope-come-lately to the party, but I think from now on I will use this method for indents, rather than using tabs. I think I picked the habit up WAY, WAY, WAY back when I learned how to type on a typewriter. It feels a little weird not to hit the TAB key when starting a new paragraph, but I'll get used to it.

Indesign is forcing me to start using paragraph styles to organize the document... makes document-wide edits a lot easier later on. Its amazing what you can do when you actually learn to use the tools the way they were designed.

Does this make sense to you guys? That using TAB characters instead of setting the first line indent was what was wrong?

Cheers
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Old 06-03-2011, 07:16 PM   #11
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Very clean.
Can you please post a sample ePub made in AWP from a Word document please?
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Old 06-03-2011, 07:47 PM   #12
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Can you please post a sample ePub made in AWP from a Word document please?
The trial of AWP is fully functional for 30 days... just download it and try it yourself if you're curious.
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