A client's Word file from hell

This is for InDesign CS4/5, the process is similar in Quark and I'm sure versions lower than CS4 will do the same thing (untested, though).

1. Placing your file
Go to your file>place box, once that pops up you'll be able to select "show import options" which is where we want to be. Find your file, click open.

2. Clearing her crap
Here you can obviously look around in your settings it provides you for typical options. Typographers quotes, clear local formatting, importing your own styles that you'd like to assign to the document.

3. Clearing up multiple tabs, returns, etc.
Once your text is imported with the removal of local formatting you now have no bolds, wonky fonts, sizes, nothing. It's just text with the extra returns, tabs and inconveniences. Turn on your Invisibles, find your first instance you'd like to remove, ie. an extra return and highlight the paragraph character, and copy it (works for others things such as tabs and soft returns). Now open your Find/ Replace window and in the "Find What" field, enter two hard returns (via paste) or whichever you're finding) and enter in "Change To" just one paragraph symbol. Find, Change All (or change on a case by case basis) and you're golden.

Hope this helps, it takes your hyperlinks away as well.

Another option, within Word, might be to copy the whole doc, open a new doc, start typing in a basic font with no formatting, and then right-click, 'Paste Special' and paste with no formatting.

Hope this helps!

Hey Mara - what's up? Good to see you again. :)

The real problem is the client. You have to explain the difference between typing and typesetting and how her formatting is actually detrimental to your job (if you haven't already). Then convince her to let you format it "better" as opposed to "exactly". That will make things go a lot smoother.

But if you really want to outsource - I'd send it to Young ZM here. Sounds like he's game - which means he's probably never experienced a job from hell.

There's no time like the present. :)

Mara... try one of these text cleaners, then bill them for the time it WOULD have taken you to do it manually

http://www.macworld.com/article/161498/2011/08/cleanhaven.html#lsrc.rss_weblogs_macgems

Work smarter. Not harder.

Well, gang, wonders never do cease! The client grudgingly agreed to open up her file and get rid of all her weird formatting. And I mean weird, or I'd have easily been able to do it myself. She called me later to apologize for having been such a crank about it, since she did see all the issues I was concerned about. She sent me a much cleaner file, not perfect, but usable. I've since dug into the unspeakable delights of dumping it into an InDesign layout (CS3, alas) and recreating -- to her EXACT demands -- all the formatting she tried to do herself in Word, based on a printout she gave me in a ginormous loose-leaf binder. Hello, 1993!

Why won't InDesign let you double-click on the page icons to navigate through the document? Or use the J+# keystroke without trying to guess what they want you to call the page number after it's had a master applied to it? Maybe they added those features to later upgrades. Maybe someday I will discover this for myself. Maybe Mars has really good coffee shops already and all we need is to bring the freakin' poetry and bongo drums.

Terry, I'll check out that advice of yours for future reference. I wish I could farm this @#$&^% job out, but she wants it two weeks ago and anyway, the only designers I know around here are either morons or cold competition. *sigh*

Thank you all so much for chiming in. I'm taking notes :)

??

if you double click on the page icon in the page palette, it will take you to that page (it's worked that way since CS1, at least).

master pages shouldn't affect how the page numbering is referred to (unless there's some INDD function i've never heard of, but i don't see a way to do it). if you right click the page icon and select numbers and section options, you can define how page numbers are referred to. if you create funky section titles, you'll have funky page numbering to refer to (i.e., if your section prefix is "chapter 1", your numbering will be "chapter 1-1, chapter 1-2"). if you keep it simple (section prefix "1", page numbering is "1-1, 1-2").