InDesign -> Flare

This forum is for all Flare issues related to importing files or projects.
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Frida
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Feb 26, 2016 3:17 am

InDesign -> Flare

Post by Frida »

Hi all,

I am about to migrate a large manual from InDesign to Flare and I am looking for a best practice for this. I hope that you can share your experiences!

Can I import a HTML exported from InDesign? If so can I create multiple topics based on headings in my InDesign file? (Each h1 will start a new topic for example.)
Can I import resources (images) at the same time?
Unfortunately I don´t have neither Flare nor InDesign available at the moment and I must have some kind of plan figured out when I get it all at my desk.

Thanks!
lauradent
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2015 4:45 pm

Re: InDesign -> Flare

Post by lauradent »

Crickets? I'm wondering this myself: how to import from InDesign into Flare.

I suspect there are two options, neither of them particularly elegant:

1) Export from InDesign into Word (if you can do that), and then import the resulting Word document into Flare. I suspect both steps would create a big mess that you'd then have to clean up in Flare, with a lot of work to recreate what you originally got in InDesign.

2) Brute-force copy-and-paste from the InDesign document into Flare topics. While this is not-fun and tedious, I suspect it's likely the "cleaner" option.

Any other thoughts?

Thanks.
Laura
BaritoneJP
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Re: InDesign -> Flare

Post by BaritoneJP »

Having used InDesign prior to Flare, I don't want to discourage you, but I didn't find an easy way to move from ID to Flare. I finally landed on converting to Flare by way of Word.

To get there you need to export the INDD file as PDF, then save the PDF as a Word Document (or HTML if you wish). (see this link for more info) Then, use the Flare import Word files features and options to end with your (sort of) best result. You will need to, as developers call it, refactor to end with a usable output.

When all was said and done, and because of the lack of resources (bodies in the seats), we made the choice to not convert the legacy software manuals and continued using InDesign (not many legacy software changes in our case, thankfully). Our current software manuals, once converted, are now maintained in Flare.
Thank you for your comments and help with my quandary ...
Jamey
RobSwanson
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Joined: Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:02 am

Re: InDesign -> Flare

Post by RobSwanson »

I was going to transition our Training manuals from InDesign to Flare. The InDesign was beautiful and there was no way I could find to make it look as good.
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