You're a designer, not a text jockey. But sometimes you're forced to work with Microsoft Word anyway

You're a designer, not a text jockey. But sometimes you're forced to work with Microsoft Word anyway, and when that happens, you'll be glad to have these tips.

Based on articles originally published in the DesignGeek e-zine.

This article won't teach you how to design in Word (a shockingly common client request), but it will help you with annoyances that crop up when Word and page-layout applications collide.

Remove Ugly Hyperlinks from Imported Word Files

You know how when you import Word files into InDesign or QuarkXPress, you sometimes get unwanted hyperlinks? Ugly underlined things colored a garish RGB blue (Figure 1)? That's because Word is set by default to convert email addresses and URLs into live links, and that's its built-in Character Style for them.

Figure 1. Hideous, yes?

I'm not going to get into the details of how to fix these in the layout program (or turn off the Word default) because I've already written them up in a post to my InDesignSecrets.com blog.

What I wanted to call out in this quickie was a tip provided by one of the blog readers in their comment to the story. Since then it's been one of the most popular tips I've mentioned during training sessions.

Kazimierz Kapusniak said you can quickly and easily clear out all the hyperlink formatting in the Word document itself, before you import it. Open the Word doc in Word, select all the text (Command/Control-A), then press Command/Control-6. You have to use the "6" from the top row, not from the number pad.

All the hyperlink formatting disappears, but the linked text remains. No other formatting is removed.

Unbelievable. Why couldn't I have learned this, like, ten years ago!

Click the link to read the entire article.