Excellent advice, Fred. And just in time too. We are in the throes of converting word docs to FM now. We already changed the tag names in the word docs and yanked the graphics, but will try the file>import rather than copy and paste.
Thanks lots. Diane ===================== -----Original Message----- From: framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com]On Behalf Of Fred Ridder Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 1:43 PM To: Jennifer Randel; Flato, Gillian; Framers List Subject: RE: Word to Frame I always found it beneficial to leave behind as much of the Word formatting as possible, and the best way to do that is to make the Word style names match the FrameMaker tag names so that you bring in only the tag name in addition to the content. > From: jennifer_randel at khsd.k12.ca.us> To: docudoc at hotmail.com; gflato at nanometrics.com; framers at frameusers.com> Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:25:44 -0800> Subject: RE: Word to Frame > > Hi all,> Wouldn't it be just as easy to use Silicon Prairie Software's Paragraph Tools as it is to create that macro?> > ~Jennifer> > -----Original Message-----> From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Fred Ridder> Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 12:20 PM> To: Mike Feimster; Flato, Gillian; Framers List> Subject: RE: Word to Frame> > > Responding to Gillian Flato, Mike Feimster wrote:> > What I've done in the past is use word macros to make the para styles> > in Word match the Frame styles, then import the word docs into Frame.> > > That's exactly the same approach I used in converting ~10k pages of Word docs (>50 docs) into FrameMaker at a previous employer.> > Just to amplify on a few points, though:> > You really want to use File>Import>File (Copy Into Document) to pull the Word content into a pre-formatted FrameMaker template rather than directly opening the Word file from the FrameMaker File menu. Besides the fact that the import filter somehow seems more robust in that mode, you also have the opportunity to leave behind most of Word-specific formatting junk by choosing the "Reformat Using Current Document's Formatting" option in the Import Text Flow by Copy dialog.> > In the same macro that you use to rename the Word paragraph styles, you should also redefine any styles that use bullets or numbering to remove them. If bullets or autonumbers are present in the Word file, FrameMaker does its best to preserve them and you'll get garbage characters in the converted file.> > Other useful operations in prepping the Word file are to remove any TOC, LOT, LOF, and index (since FrameMaker handles them completely differently), strip any headers and footers (these will be defined in your FrameMaker template) and remove any section breaks (meaningless in Frame). In my own process, I also removed all graphics from the Word file because they really slowed the conversion down and I knew we were going to replace the pasted-in images with anchored frames and referenced graphics post-conversion.> > -Fred Ridder>
